News #008: You may not want to watch, but if you do, you won't forget it
Halloween rep cinema programming across eight different countries...
Hello and welcome to Rep Cinema International. This special Halloween edition focuses on frightening events, spooky job opportunities and other evil miscellanea related to repertory cinema around the world. This newsletter is a self-initiated project that arose from my perception that there needs to be more attention and comment on the very special film screenings happening across many different cities and countries.
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Repertory cinema highlights
Sex Demon at Spectacle Theater (Brooklyn)
Thanks to the seemingly indefatigable efforts of queer film archivist/historian Evan Purchell (under the aegis of his project Ask Any Buddy), a gay adult film remake of The Exorcist has come back to life after several decades. Showing in two sold-out screenings in Brooklyn microcinema Spectacle this weekend (and in Los Angeles last weekend), Sex Demon (J.C. Cricket, 1975) has been digitized from a recently discovered 16mm print. And it looks wild. Ask Any Buddy is also a podcast which I highly recommend for fans of queer/adult film and a recent episode was devoted to Sex Demon. You can also support on Patreon for even more content.Nadja presented by Lost Vampires (London)
Here is a belated shout-out to a screening I attended a little over a month ago in London. As part of the project Lost Vampires, programmer Geoffrey Badger tracked down a rare 35mm print of Michael Almereyda’s 1994 film Nadja, an adaptation of Andre Bréton’s 1928 novel set in contemporary New York. I had never seen the film before and it’s really fresh almost 30 years on. The Q&A with actors Galaxy Craze, Karl Geary and composer Simon Fisher Turner was excellent too, giving insight into this singular moment in American independent filmmaking (the 1990s Sundance indie boom) which seems long in the past. After screenings of another few films in the Lost Vampires series in London, it looks like the print of Nadja will be heading to HOME in Manchester for a screening on December 8, details should be on their site soon.Ghost Stories: Spirits, Hauntings and Worlds Beyond at QAGOMA (Brisbane)
The wide-ranging series at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art isn’t just a Halloween special, but started in September and runs to the end of November. Taking at its heart “cinematic spectres”, it’s a substantial selection of classic and contemporary horror, animation, arthouse and more, from Apichatpong Weerasethakul to John Carpenter, Mani Kaul and Kenji Mizoguchi. Highlights include the already-screened Bedevil (Tracey Moffatt, 1993) shown in an archival 35mm print; the rarely-shown, BBC-produced faux-documentary Ghostwatch (Leslie Manning, 1992); and Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters (Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1968) as well as Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare (Yoshiyuki Kuroda, 1968), the first two of the trilogy which are showing in new digital restorations with English subtitles arranged by QAGOMA.Nello mano di King Kong at Cineteca Milano MIC (Milan)
The Museo Interattivo del Cinema in Milan is placing its audience “In the Hand of King Kong” with this series beginning this Sunday: King Kong (Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933), The Extraordinary Adventures of Saturnino Farandola (Marcel Fabre, 1913), King Kong (Peter Jackson, 2005) and King Kong vs. Godzilla (Ishirō Honda, 1962) feature in the 13-program series, which gave me a laugh when I realized they stretched the theme to end it with 2001: Odissea nello spazio (Stanley Kubrick, 1968).Soirée Halloween at Cinémathèque de Bretagne (Brest, France)
This looks like a fun program at the Brittany Film Archive, which they describe as “scary children's stories, psychedelic adventures and bizarre characters” made up from films in their collection between 1970–2017. Six short films will be shown in 70 minutes and I’m not sure which the above still is from but it’s wonderful!They Call Her… Cleopatra Wong at Asian Film Archive (Singapore)
While it might not be Halloween-specific, I wanted to mention that the Asian Film Archive’s Oldham Theatre in Singapore has sold out of several screenings of its restoration of the Singapore/Philippines genre classic They Call Her… Cleopatra Wong (Bobby A.Suarez, 1978). The below trailer should give a good clue as to why… Programmers, jump on this title for your cinemas!
Halloween Marathons
Exhumed Films 24-Hour Horror-thon at Colonial Theater (Phoenixville, US)
The legendary Exhumed Films 24-Hour Horror-thon is back after the demise of International House Philadelphia (at the end of 2019), the former venue where it was held over many years. This year’s edition takes place at the very beautiful Colonial Theater in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania (the Philly suburbs) and again feature a lineup that is not announced ahead of time, a mixture of classics and blindingly-rare obscurities. If you’re interested, keep an eye on the FB event above, as attendees generally post a running list of film titles and comments in that location throughout the event.Forstyrret Aften (Disturbed Evening) at Cinemateket, Norsk filminstitutt (Oslo)
In Norway, the Forstyrret filmsalong (“Disturbed Movie Salon”) presents an all-nighter that combines Norwegian short films and horror trivia with a series of four deeply disturbed classics: Sleepaway Camp (Robert Hiltzik, 1983), I Drink Your Blood (David E. Durston, 1970), The Uninvited (Greydon Clark, 1987) and Necromantik (Jörg Buttgereit, 1987).Eye Horror Marathon at Eye Filmmuseum (Amsterdam)
I can really get into this method of programming: four horror films that are a treat for the EYES: Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju, 1960), Eye in the Labyrinth (Mario Caiano, 1972), Eyes of Laura Mars (Irvin Kershner, 1978) and The Hills Have Eyes (Wes Craven, 1977).Horror Movie Marathon / Teen Horror Marathon at Prince Charles Cinema (London)
Kudos to Prince Charles and his cinema for running not one but two different overnight marathons.
Hall of fame-quality short film program titles by Astria Suparak
Job listings
Anthology Film Archives (New York), Head Projectionist, full time
Arrow Films/Engine House Media Services (London), QC and Disc Authoring Assistant, full time
BAVC Media (San Francisco), Development Director, full time
Cousin (United States), Assistant, part time
Film Forum (New York), Premieres Assistant, full time
New York Public Library, Media Preservation Services Intern (paid), part time
Sheffield DocFest (Sheffield, UK), Senior Programmer, full time
VideoDataBank (Chicago), Director, full time
Yorkshire Film Archive (York, UK), Archive Collections Cataloguer
Endnotes
Featured images: Unknown film still from the Cinémathèque de Bretagne’s program Soirée Halloween // Necromantik (Jörg Buttgereit, 1987)
Coming soon: an interview with Wakae Nakane and Miryam Sas, programmers of the screening 1990s Experimental Film in Japan: Women’s Anarchic Visions of the Everyday at the BAMPFA in Berkeley.
Some more interviews and feature articles in the works. Stay tuned!
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