FCN—Life of the Dead (La vie des morts, 1991)

The French Cinema Now revival screening of Arnaud Desplechin's rarely (if ever) seen first feature film Life of the Dead (La vie des morts, 1991) was a welcome meditation on the presence of the oak in the acorn. It proved to be a perfect companion piece to A Christmas Tale for prefiguring many of the themes and methods expressed more fully in Desplechin's critically-acclaimed recent work, including a family gathering pulled into the gravitational field of the death horizon via an attempted suicide.

Where Life of the Dead differs from A Christmas Tale is that the family has gathered for a death watch, instead of a competitive if not hopeful negotiation to save the life of their matriarch. But the intrafamilial hatred is amusingly familiar in retrospect, including the embittered daughter Pascale (Marianne Denicourt) trying to rule the family brood through sheer animus if not animosity and Emmanuelle Devos as the girlfriend caught unwittingly wide-eyed in the crossfire.

Clocking in at a mere 54 minutes, Life of the Dead sketches characterizations of its immense ensemble but remains attractive for its sheer ambition and Desplechin's creative compulsion towards stylistic density. As Desplechin stated to Dennis Lim in a May 2005 Village Voice interview: "It's a lot of work to have density—to fill the screen with details and small stuff, trying to imagine for each character a past and a future. I think it has to do with a hunger and it goes back to my first film [La Vie des Morts]. I was scared to death that I would never make another one, and I wanted so much to work with actors, so even though it was very low-budget and we only had five days, I wrote more characters than I could really put in: 25 actors in this one-hour film. I was hungry—I just wanted a lot of them, quantity not quality, different actors, different ages." In his earlier review for the Voice, Lim characterized Life of the Dead as "a terse, acrid riposte to The Big Chill."

"La Vie des morts reflects the existential need for reassurance through self-distraction and the conduct of everyday rituals within the collective crisis of imminent death," writes Acquarello at Strictly Film School.

I need to commend the San Francisco Film Society for scoring this archival print for their newly-launched French Cinema Now series. The opportunity to see such a rare film unavailable on DVD is a cinephile's treat and a wonderful way to appreciate how Desplechin's work has developed over the past decade and a half.

Cross-published on Twitch.

FCN: A Christmas Tale (Un Conte de Noël)—Q&A With Arnaud Desplechin

A French film festival in San Francisco has been long overdue and highly anticipated, as was proven in force by the capacity audience for the San Francisco Film Society's French Cinema Now ("FCN") opening night screening of Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale (Un Conte de Noël) at San Francisco's Clay Theater in the Upper Fillmore.

After acknowledging the festival's sponsors, Graham Leggat—Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Society ("SFFS")—then generously shouted out to loyal SFFS members Netta and Mike Fedor for celebrating their 30th anniversary at the opening night of FCN. "What could be more romantic than an evening of French cinema?" Leggat beamed.

"Over the next five days," Leggat continued, "you will see entries from all sorts of genres addressing all aspects of the human condition." Encouraging FCN's opening night audience to come back during the course of the festival to catch the Special Preview Presentation of Pascal Bonitzer's Alibi (Le grand alibi, 2008) as well as Valeria Bruni Tedeschi's film Actresses (Actrices, 2007)—"Which first surfaced at the New York Film Festival many many months ago and has had trouble getting a release in the United States because of music rights. This may be the only opportunity you get to see this film as the rights show no sign of clearing any time soon."—Leggat likewise drew attention to Benajmin Marquet's equestrian documentary Lads and Jockeys (Lads et jockeys, 2006) and, of course, FCN's closing night film, the Cannes Palme d'Or winner The Class (Entre les murs, 2008) by Laurent Cantet.

"None of that," Leggat qualified, "should draw our attention at the moment from the wonderful film we are to see here tonight. Extraordinary, novelistic, part melancholic melodrama, part indescribable fable, about a family brought together like it or not for three days during the holidays made in inimitable fashion by the most daring and accomplished French filmmaker working today." Leggat then invited Arnaud Desplechin to the stage. After warm applause, Desplechin—charming, with mirthful eyes—admitted he felt stupid for not knowing what to say.

Leggat added before starting A Christmas Tale that FCN would likewise be screening in coming days Desplechin's first film Life of the Dead (La vie des morts, 1991)—"which is almost impossible to see in this country"—as well as Desplechin's 1996 tour de force My Sex Life … or How I Got Into an Argument (Comment je me suis dispute ... Ma vie sexuelle) with two of the key actors that Arnaud has worked with many times and who likewise appear in A Christmas Tale: Emmanuelle Devos and Mathieu Amalric. [This Q&A transcript is not for the spoiler-wary!]

* * *

Leggat welcomed Desplechin back to the stage after the screening of A Christmas Tale to field questions from his appreciative audience, with interpretive assistance from Donald McMahon. Leggat started the questioning off: "Where to begin, Arnaud? This film is so restless, always moving, all the scenes from a different angle, a different approach to the viewer, a snow storm, a thousand fragments. How on earth did you put this together? How much footage did you have in the editing room? How many shots went into creating this universe?"

"A lot, I guess," Desplechin grinned. After the laughter subsided, he offered that one lie producers frequently advocate is that film is expensive, when actually film is not that expensive. He doesn't count shots; he just films.

"I understand," Leggat pursued, "but, you must have had an enormous amount of material to work with. Did you edit it? Or did you work directly with the editor?"

Desplechin claimed that—since he was a student in film school—he has frequently worked as a director of photography or as an editor on small, short-budget films. Film is, after all, a collaborative project; it is not a novel. He couldn't imagine not collaborating with the editor or fellow writers. For example, on A Christmas Tale he worked with Emmanuel Bourdieu, with whom he'd worked on his earlier films Sex Life … or How I Got Into an Argument and Esther Kahn (2000). Sometimes he works with a lot of material because it's required to catch a scene's poetry; other times everything he has to say is achieved in a single take.

Leggat reminded Desplechin that once in an interview he said that when he's working with actors, he's not looking for a result; he wants them to try and so they dig in all directions. "Certainly to me, to us, it seems very much like that in this film; but, tell us something about the process of working with a cast this big with so many individual stories, with so many glimpses."

Desplechin remembered that interview with Film Comment, and offered: "I couldn't work with an actor if he's giving me just the 'right' performance because actually I do not know exactly what is the 'right' performance, you know? I'm writing lines—I hope they are good lines for acting—and after that I just hope and pray that something happens on the set, that I will have another understanding of those lines that I have written." What he loves is when his actors, as human beings, strive to find several meanings in his written lines. Unable to completely translate a saying in French that amounts to the idea that stage directions are cheap lines, Desplechin offered by example that—though the script might say "she cries"—it might be more truthful to the scene if she laughs. As a director he waits and tries to create the conditions on the set where, hopefully, something mystical, religious, or miraculous might appear.

As "a straight and simple example" Desplechin mentioned the scene towards film's end where the daughter Elizabeth (Anne Consigny)—who, incidentally can likewise be seen in Pascal Bonitzer's Alibi—forlornly asks her father Abel (Jean-Paul Roussillon) why she is always unhappy and what is missing from her life? Her father protectively answers, "Your brother." When Desplechin wrote that line, he wrote it "almost stupidly", he just thought it was a good line for the scene and it wasn't until the actors began performing it that they discovered a complex tension within the line. It's quite possible that when Abel says, "Your brother", he is obsessively referencing his dead son Joseph; but, Elizabeth understands and accepts her father's remark as her own obsessive preoccupation with her brother Henri. They are so sure they are communicating and that they have an emotional connection; but, in truth, they are actually speaking about two different brothers. This is the true meaning that the actors, through their performances, add to the cheap lines that he wrote. It makes the scene much more interesting and human.

Abel tries to soothe Elizabeth by quoting from Nietzsche's prologue to On the Genealogy of Morals (which Desplechin exquisitely renders as his camera slowly pans the snow-laden streets of Roubaix): "We don't know ourselves, we knowledgeable people—we are personally ignorant about ourselves. And there's good reason for that. We've never tried to find out who we are. How could it ever happen that one day we'd discover our own selves? With justice it's been said that 'Where your treasure is, there shall your heart be also.' Our treasure lies where the beehives of our knowledge stand. We are always busy with our knowledge, as if we were born winged creatures—collectors of intellectual honey. In our hearts we are basically concerned with only one thing, to 'bring something home.' As far as the rest of life is concerned, what people call 'experience'—which of us is serious enough for that? Who has enough time? In these matters, I fear, we've been 'missing the point.'

"Our hearts have not even been engaged—nor, for that matter, have our ears! We've been much more like someone divinely distracted and self-absorbed into whose ear the clock has just pealed the twelve strokes of noon with all its force and who all at once wakes up and asks himself 'What exactly did that clock strike?'—so we rub ourselves behind the ears afterwards and ask, totally surprised and embarrassed 'What have we really just experienced? And more: 'Who are we really?' Then, as I've mentioned, we count—after the fact—all the twelve trembling strokes of the clock of our experience, our lives, our being—alas! in the process we keep losing the count. So we remain necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not understand ourselves, we have to keep ourselves confused. For us this law holds for all eternity: 'Each man is furthest from himself.' Where we ourselves are concerned, we are not 'knowledgeable people.' " (Translation by Ian C. Johnston.)

"Speaking of the father and Joseph," Leggat queried, "and how Joseph's death has created the father, did you imagine always that you would start with that scene at the graveyard where he addresses the camera?"

Yes, Desplechin affirmed. When he started to write A Christmas Tale, he wanted to work with the popular American genre of the Thanksgiving dinner; but, of course, since he filmed in France, he shifted the family gathering to the Christmas holiday. Those lines that he wrote for the father at the graveyard are obscure threnodian lines that are rich material for an actor and he borrowed them from the American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose own son died at the age of seven. Desplechin was admittedly confounded by Emerson's "Threnody", a poem in which Emerson strangely celebrates the death of his child, an experience which is one of the most cruel that life can offer. At the graveyard, Abel contests the value of tears and professes to be happy at the death of Joseph, claiming he has lost nothing. What a strange statement! (Additionally, it did not escape my notice that in the film's Christmas gift exchange, Abel gives his wife a volume of Emerson's writing; a lucid example of Desplechin's exquisite textuality.)

At this juncture Leggat opened the questioning up to Desplechin's appreciative audience. A cinema studies instructor expressed his interest in Desplechin's observation regarding the multiple meanings possible in a film. (Elsewhere—in fact—Desplechin has stated, "You can't stop a film from meaning things.") This instructor said he often argues with his students about intended and ascribed meanings in films. In one particular scene in A Christmas Tale, for example, the mother Junon (Catherine Deneuve) asks Henri, "Where are you coming from?" and he replies, "Where are you going?" Henri could be asking something as simple as what hospital she's going to, or could be saying something more telling about oblivion.

To argue is the point, Desplechin responded. "It's not about the will of the so-called director." The two lines the instructor was quoting—"Where are you coming from?" and "Where are you going?"—can be performed with similar signification. There is, in fact, a bizarre association with those lines in that Junon has earlier characterized Henri as behaving like "a little Jew." The first lesson you would learn from the Talmud is to never answer a question except with another question. So Henri's response is a Talmudic way of answering his mother's question. It becomes a kind of game. It provides a hue to Mathieu's character, which is like a Talmudic joke. Or you could have the other signification. The point is not what it means.

By further example, Desplechin alluded to the final scene in A Christmas Tale where there is a small shadow puppet theater above which is written "The Castle of Theseus." What does this mean? When he was 12 years old, Desplechin loved Greek mythology. Theseus is the story of an Athenian youth lost in a labyrinth. Perhaps the little boy Joseph wrote this above the shadow theater to express that he too was lost? On top of that, the script references William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in which the duke of Athens is likewise named Theseus and from which Elizabeth quotes in the film's final coda. "Which is the right meaning is not the point," Desplechin reiterated. "Is it beautiful? Is it magic? Are the actors happy? Are you happy to see the actors acting?" This is the film's created, working tension.

I then asked, "You've often stated that the characters you have Mathieu Amalric play possess the faults you wish you had. What are those faults that you love in Amalric's portrayals?"

"Oh God," Desplechin grinned, "the fact that he's so gross. I would love to be so drunk. If I could steal from my best friend. I'm jealous. When he steals the meds from Paul, it's so vile. It's so nice!"

One gentlemen was impressed with the unusual amount of medical detail in A Christmas Tale and he wondered if Desplechin had personal experience with bone marrow transplants or if it was just a subject he had extensively researched?

Hopefully, Desplechin answered, he would never have this kind of personal experience. But when he began working on the script and shaping the relationship between Junon and Henri, and exploring the theme of banishment, he came across a French volume which laid out the ethical complications of bone marrow transplants in a mythopoeic manner. The bone marrow transplant became the perfect mechanism to bring the family together. To further the script, he then visited several hospitals and interviewed the authors of the book he had found. His manner of writing was simply to imagine everything and then to confirm it for scientific accuracy. Surprisingly, his wildest imaginings proved to be medically accurate. France and the United States lead the field in bone marrow transplants, which are known not only for their physical danger, but for their psychological provocation, which intrigued Desplechin. He could understand why someone would be afraid of, let's say, a liver transplant or a blood transfusion because you can imagine a liver transplant or see a blood transfusion; but, bone marrow is an unknown substance. Yet it has this strange psychological effect fraught with poetry, either in the host, or the donor, or the family member who cannot donate. He endeavored to be as respectful as possible by being medically accurate and as realistic as possible to, thereby, achieve the mythopoeic.

Another audience member expressed his appreciation of the extraordinary usage of music in A Christmas Tale and he wondered if Desplechin shot sequences with specific pieces of music in mind or whether the music was layered onto the film afterwards in the editing room? For him it felt as if the music spoke to the inner life of the characters in an uncanny and significant manner.

Desplechin said he would love to answer that he knew which music he was going to use before he shot sequences in the film, but that would not be the truth. Rephrasing his earlier statement that he writes "cheap lines" of direction that are given later hue by the performances of the actors, Desplechin likewise uses music to enhance what is the heart of any given scene. In the editing room, he often removes the sound to see what emotions are being shown on the film, intuits which music would be most expressive, adds it and—more often than not—time and time again the music and the spoken words match perfectly.

Leggat sought clarification and asked Desplechin if he edited the film without dialogue? Desplechin replied that his first edit is with the dialogue but that if he encounters a scene which is proving problematic because it is not enough or is too plain, he removes the dialogue and converts his film into something of a silent movie, so that he can watch the emotions that are being portrayed and find a way to use music to pronounce those emotions. Desplechin reminded his audience that excellent dialogue was often written for silent movies even though you never hear it and the intertitles abbreviate the script. Some of Ernst Lubitsch's scripts for his silent films are quite remarkable. Reiterating what he has often stated in interviews, Desplechin is still 12 years old inside and—when he watches movies—he often watches them as he did when he was 12 years old. Which is to say that even though he didn't always understand what the adults were saying on screen, he understood the emotions they were expressing and—thereby—understood the scenes. He practices that still. If he is having a problem with a scene, he removes the lines to "listen" to the emotions that are being displayed. If he finds the right music, it will provide the hue to those emotions and when he adds the dialogue track back, then the words work.

Another audience member was intrigued by the Christmas play put on by the boys Baptiste (Clément Obled) and Basile (Thomas Obled), seen by everyone in the family except the quarreling siblings Elizabeth and Henri upstairs, whose ongoing enmity was ostensibly the play's central theme. As Andrew O'Hehir observed in his review for Salon, the children's play "recapitulates the central themes of the larger story in small but broad strokes: banishment, punishment, repentance, forgiveness."

"One could say," Desplechin responded, "that you have two plays; one upstairs and one downstairs." Apologizing for a lack of even false modesty, Desplechin admitted he loved that scene, even if he wrote it. He thinks the play is fascinating in the way the children come up with an answer for why the siblings are fighting (the one prince has slept with a goat) and devise a proper punishment (his arm is chopped off). Such physical mutilation inspires emotional contrition.

Desplechin was asked if he could talk about the scene with the mathematical probabilities of Junon's survival on the chalk board. The concern with the percentages of survival is a specific aspect of bone marrow transplants, Desplechin explained. For physicians it's a problematic scenario because it's quite possible they must kill two people in order to save one. Life suddenly becomes a mere percentage of chance. Of note is that the calculations on the chalkboard are mathematically correct and—during the filming of the sequence—Desplechin insured that one of the mathematicians was present in the next room watching the filming on a monitor to insure that the corrections made by the actors on the chalkboard remained accurate. The ironic truth of all this is that a life and death can be formulaically charted on a chalkboard. What Desplechin found interesting was to monitor Junon's response to this information. "It's not that nice to suddenly see your life reduced to two figures." Plus, Junon does not understand—just as Desplechin does not really understand—what the figures all mean. Once again, it reminded him of when he was 10 or so watching Alfred Hitchock's Torn Curtain on his grandparent's television. There was a scene where two scientists are arguing in front of a chalkboard, writing formulas about nuclear weapons. Desplechin didn't understand a word of what they were saying but the scene was full of pure tension, which he did understand from their facial expressions. He saw that the actors were delighted to perform these lines, secure with the mathematician present in the adjoining room.

Finally, one young woman expressed interest in the dynamic between Catherine Deneuve and her real-life daughter Chiara Mastroianni and how in A Christmas Tale their characters didn't really like each other. She wondered how much of the casting influenced Desplechin's writing?

"When I'm writing," Desplechin replied, "I'm never thinking of any actor." For simple reasons. The writing process is so long—it took him at least a year to write the script for A Christmas Tale—that, if he'd had someone in mind during that year of writing, he would be bored with that actor by the time it came to shooting. They wouldn't surprise him any longer and—as he mentioned before—by the time he gets to the set, he wants to be surprised and informed by his actors. When he and his co-writers are developing the script, they sometimes think of dead actors in the roles to help formulate them; but, never live ones. Afterwards, when it came to casting the role of Junon's daughter-in-law, it took Desplechin nearly two weeks to muster up the courage to invite Chiara who he thought would be perfect for the role for fear that it would cause tension between Chiara and her real mother Catherine Deneuve; precisely because Junon does not care for Chiara's character Sylvia (except for when she betrays her husband and sleeps with Simon (Laurent Cappelluto)). Only then does Junon become intrigued by Sylvia. Despite this tension between the characters, both actresses were consummate professionals on the set and were not distracted by their mother-daughter bond.

With that, Graham Leggat closed the questioning and stated that "Tony" Scott in his review of A Christmas Tale for The New York Times wrote: "I swear, it filled me with unadulterated joy." "I think all of us here tonight felt that," Leggat concluded.

Cross-published on Twitch. Photo of Arnaud Desplechin courtesy of Robin Holland.

2008 DOCFEST—Michael's Hawley's Preview

Legalized cat-shooting, The Price is Right, competitive balloon-twisting and Bigfoot—these are only a few of the subjects you'll find explored at this year's San Francisco International Documentary Festival ("DocFest"). Last year's event was such a phenomenal success (over 5,000 tickets sold), they've expanded this year's edition from two weeks to three—a fortnight's run at the Roxie Theater (Oct. 17-30) followed by a one-week debut engagement at the Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley (Oct. 30-Nov. 6). Now in its seventh year, DocFest 2008 will spotlight over 60 non-fiction films from around the world, encompassing a tremendous range of interests and issues.

I've had the chance to preview three of this year's selections, including co-opening nighter Chelsea on the Rocks directed by Abel Ferrara (The Bad Lieutenant, The Addiction). The titular Chelsea is the infamous New York City hotel that's been home to a century's worth of masterminds and miscreants from the world of arts and letters. We're talking everyone from Mark Twain to Édith Piaf to Sid Vicious. And now the joint's on the rocks because it's being converted into a highfalutin boutique hotel.

Ferrara moved in for several months in 2007 to document the end of an era, and the result is expectedly, and perhaps appropriately, a cluttered and erratic affair. The director interviews an assortment of residents past and present, cussing and interrupting from behind the camera. Some of these chats are interesting, while others are rambles about suicides, drug dealers, ghosts and police raids. Unfortunately none of the interviewees are identified on-screen, as if to say "tough luck if you're not cool enough to know who these people are." I did recognize Czech director Milos Forman, who stayed at the Chelsea for two rent-free years when he first moved to America. Forman tells a great story about being half naked (the bottom half) and locked out of his room during a hotel fire. Ethan Hawke, who has made his own film about the Chelsea, also has a few good tales to tell.

In addition to the interviews, Ferrara incorporates some nice archival materials and lovely footage of the hotel's physical structure; its corridors, windows, railings and doorways. What absolutely does not work, however, are two clunky re-enactments—one of the Sid and Nancy "incident" and the other of Janis Joplin partying and passing out. (The latter contains a brief appearance by Grace Jones, a personal favorite who hasn't graced a screen since 2001's Shaka Zulu: The Citadel.) In place of these flashbacks, I might have wished for more of Stanley Bard, the hotel's longtime manager. His largesse and compassion gave many a starving artist a place to live until their ship came in. Everyone in the film talks about him, but his own segment in the film is relatively brief. Abel Ferrara's last two films received neither theatrical nor DVD release in the U.S., and it appears that this, his first feature documentary, is headed for a similar fate. So if you're a fan of the director or interested in the Chelsea Hotel, it's best not to miss opening night at this year's DocFest.

Every summer when I visit my friends Richard and Michael in their South Philadelphia home, I'm awestruck by a series of elaborate mosaics that line one side of South Street. In a Dream is the story of Isaiah Zagar, the artist who created them. Using tile, glass, mirror and broken pottery, Zagar has created a wonderland of mosaics covering over 50,000 square feet spread over seven buildings. They're a loving testament to his wife and muse, Julia, and their two now-grown sons. Youngest son Jeremiah is the film's director, and he uses a number of effective devices—collage, animation and fluid camera movement—to exemplify the beauty of his father's art. That familial connection is also the reason we get such a painfully honest accounting of both Zagar the artist and Zagar the man—particularly when during the film's shoot, an indiscretion on Zagar's part threatens to destroy his family from within. In a Dream is personal non-fiction filmmaking at its very best.

Another film I previewed was Bird's Nest: Herzog & de Meuron in China. As everyone in the world now knows, the Bird's Nest is the Beijing stadium built for this summer's Olympics. Herzog and de Meuron are the Swiss architects who designed it (they also built the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park) and the film documents their five-year endeavor to make both themselves and the Chinese government happy. Unfortunately, the film is pretty dry stuff, with little in the way of lyricism for a documentary about such a beautiful building. Too much of the film focuses on a Herzog & de Meuron urban development project in the Central Chinese city of Jinhua, hindering the narrative flow of the Bird's Nest story. What I ultimately took from the film was an appreciation for the nuances and signifiers that come into play when two cultures undertake a project as massive as this one.

These three films only begin to scratch the surface of what's on offer. A highlight of the festival is sure to be the tribute honoring filmmaker Melody Gilbert, recipient of DocFest's first Someone to Watch Award. Longtime attendees of both IndieFest and DocFest might already be acquainted with Gilbert's work and its singular subject matter. This year we'll have the opportunity to watch five of her films, including Married at the Mall (about couples tying the knot at America's largest shopping mall), Whole (a profile of people who only feel "complete" after amputating a healthy limb), A Life Without Pain (a study of children with a neurological defect that doesn't allow them to feel physical pain), Urban Explorers (a look at adventurers who seek out forbidden places, from abandoned insane asylums to Parisian catacombs) and her latest work Disconnected (in which three college students give up computers cold turkey). Then, in "A Chat with Melody Gilbert", the director will receive her award, shows clips from her films, offer her Top 10 doc-making tips and present a sneak peak of her current documentary-in-progress.

A few other films worth mentioning are the titles I alluded to in my opening paragraph: Here, Kitty Kitty, Come On Down! The Road to "The Price is Right", Twisted: A Balloonamentary and Bigfoot: A Beast on the Run. I can heartily recommend The People's Advocate: The Life & Times of Charles R. Garry, which I saw at last year's Mill Valley Film Festival. (Other DocFest08 films that have previously played Bay Area festivals include Dust, Anvil! The Story of Anvil and Megalopolis.) Enlighten Up!, which did quite well during a recent theatrical run in New York, examines the $18 billion yoga industry. Finally, the film I'm most looking forward to is The Linguists, in which two scientists travel the world documenting languages on the verge of extinction.

So there you have it—a quick look at perhaps one-third of this year's DocFest program. If none of these films sound interesting to you, check out the rest of the line-up at the SF Indie website and I promise you'll find something that does.

ONLY IN SAN FRANCISCO!!

As if it wasn't fabulous enough that the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band marched down the aisles of the Davies Symphony Hall playing "Burning Down the House" along with David Byrne and his onstage musicians, my friend César Privat whisked backstage to meet Byrne and the first thing out of his mouth was: "I've been a fan of yours ever since I was a little girl in Peru!"

DEAD CHANNELS 2008—Latchkey's Lament

Canadian animator Troy Nixey is best-known as a graphic illustrator who has collaborated with such notable creators as Mike Mignola and Neil Gaiman, as well as creating his own works. As reported by filmbud Peter Sciretta at /Film, Guillermo del Toro—after seeing Latchkey's Lament—tapped Nixey on the shoulder to direct the remake of the 1973 cult classic telefilm Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. "Now you know the kind of film you have to make to catch Guillermo del Toro's attention," Dead Channels programmer Bruce Fletcher quipped in his introduction.

As Tentaco Productions synopsize at the film's official website, Latchkey's Lament employs a blend of CGI animation and live action to tell a tale of love and heroism. Mr. And Mrs. Key are snatched from their home late one evening by the insidious Keyfiend and taken back to his monolithic factory. There Mr. Key witnesses the demise of his wife at the hands of the Keyfiend. Mister Key must escape the Keyfiend's clutches if he is to survive and avenge the spirit of his beloved.

Latchkey's Lament screened at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival in the Short Cuts Canada Programme 3 and—as Michael Sauve detailed in his write-up of the program—"Troy Nixey spent five years lovingly constructing his ambitious short." Ambitious it is and darkly beautiful, veined with a uniquely mesmerizing mystery and magic, clearly expressing the phantasmagorical sheen familiar to the imagined terrains of Evening Class favorite Guillermo del Toro. Along with Madame Tutli-Putli, Latchkey's Lament assures Canada's competitive position in the world of animation and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is one remake not to be afraid of and one—in fact—to highly anticipate.

Cross-published on Twitch.

DEAD CHANNELS 2008—The Horribly Slow Murderer With the Extremely Inefficient Weapon

The "Really Scary Shorts" program in last year's Dead Channels Festival of Fantastic Film featured Richard Gale's Criticized, winner of—count 'em—15 film festival awards, including Best Short Film at Dead Channels 2007. With Criticized, Gale proved once and for all that it's the little things in life that matter in a horror movie. In his follow-up—The Horribly Slow Murderer With the Extremely Inefficient Weapon—Gale shifts from the office desk paperclip holder to the kitchen cutlery drawer. Already at its world premiere at Austin's Fantastic Fest last month, The Horribly Slow Murderer With the Extremely Inefficient Weapon won a special jury prize and saw its equally popular West Coast premiere in this year's Dead Channels' "Fantastic Short Films" program. At this point I have to officially crown Richard Gale as the reigning king of "object horror."

Last year during the Q&A after Criticized, Bruce Fletcher (with tongue in cheek) asked Richard Gale if he'd received any bad reviews for Criticized? Richard was quick to emphasize his film was not autobiographical and that everyone in the audience was perfectly safe. He assured them they could even tell him the film sucked if they wanted to, though I don't recall a single individual taking him up on that. The film, as most folks probably know by now, concerns a prominent film critic who writes a scathing review of a new horror film, and is then abducted by the film's mentally unstable director, who subjects him to an eye-opening experience.

Gale's inspiration for Criticized came from a real movie review of another person's film that he read in the L.A. Weekly many years ago where the critic actually wrote, "Hopefully, this will be the final nail in the coffin of this filmmaker's career." At the time, Gale thought, "Man, that's harsh."

Gale explained to his Dead Channels audience: "All you filmmakers understand how incredibly difficult it is to make a film, which is something some critics don't fully realize—some go too far and they all have their reasons for doing it—but, this review in the L.A. Weekly seemed like a good jumping off place for a story like this."

Gale has been planning a full-length feature of Criticized, which he promised would "not be 90+ minutes of bathroom torture." He qualified that Criticized is one short episode in the life of filmmaker Arthur Lements (Brian Rohan) and the full-length feature will show much more before and after, "possibly even involving a festival director" Gale added pointedly, staring directly at Bruce Fletcher (whose eyebrows hit the rafters). The feature-length version of Criticized will also include several scenes from Lements' film The Ultimate Terror, the very film scathingly reviewed by film critic Darian Stonehall (John Lynd).

Until the feature-length version of Criticized is finished, however, Gale has worked up The Horribly Slow Murderer With the Extremely Inefficient Weapon, which has the likely chance of repeating last year's win at Dead Channels.

Structured as a 10-minute trailer for a soon-to-open film, The Horribly Slow Murderer With the Extremely Inefficient Weapon had its world premiere at Austin's Fantastic Fest where it was included in a block of horror shorts with titles like Road and Snip, serving to make the title of Gale's film effectively stand out by contrast.

Before opening the Q&A to questions from the audience, Bruce asked Gale how long it actually took him to shoot his film with the incredibly long title and when audiences could expect the nine-hour epic? Gale responded that The Horribly Slow Murderer With the Extremely Inefficient Weapon was shot in about two and a half months, shooting on weekends, roughly 22 days of shooting. About halfway through the shoot Gale asked himself, "What the hell am I doing?" It was a short film that "metastasized into a gigantic project that wouldn't end." An important red flag would have been when he found himself describing his comedy short using the word "epic." An incredible amount of effort went into it for an approximate cost of $600, accomplished with his Panasonic HVX200 camera and Final Cut Pro. Gale's challenge was to see how epic-looking a film he could create for practically no money and the results are admittedly astounding. For the greenscreen effects he bought a swatch of green fabric, which he put up in his livingroom, thereby creating location sequences with the Kremlin and the Egyptian pyramids in the background. The Egyptian sequence, in fact, was shot in the Mojave National Preserve between L.A. and Vegas because he wanted to utilize one of the world's biggest sand dunes. Criticized's Brian Rohan returns as The Murderer.

I asked Gale about his focus on object horror. He responded, "I was inspired and influenced by the first Evil Dead with the No. 2 pencil in the ankle. There's something about very ordinary household objects that we're all extremely familiar with that can be used in horrendous ways. It's a little bit different and, hopefully, something you haven't seen before."

If all goes as it should, shooting on the feature-length version of Criticized will begin by year's end so that the completed film can be brought back for next year's Dead Channels. As a lesson in ingenious economy, the bathroom that's used in the shot-for-shot Psycho parody in The Horribly Slow Murderer With the Extremely Inefficient Weapon (a thrillingly brilliant Hitchcockian homage) is the selfsame shower stall where torture is committed in Criticized. "That's my bathroom," Gale boasts. "That's my shower." I can't help but wonder if Gale's shower stall is going to be used for scenes of horror again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again....

10/14/08: As predicted, The Horribly Slow Murderer With the Extremely Inefficient Weapon won Audience Favorite for Best Short at this year's Dead Channels.

Cross-published on Twitch.

DEAD CHANNELS 2008—Let the Right One In (Låt den Rätte Komma in)

Genres are borrowed skins. Filmmakers adopt them and adapt them to fit the stories they want to tell. In the case of Tomas Alfredson's Swedish coming-of-age vampire tale Let the Right One In (Låt den Rätte Komma in) the tale is so dense with nuance, so textured with masterful indirection and tender delights, so imaginative in how it reconfigures established tropes of the vampire mythos that it stretches the skin taut, rendering it nearly translucent to reveal its wondrous heartbeat within, like the vulnerable pulse at one's temples. With Let the Right One In, Eli's coming and, no, you won't want to hide your heart.

As Dead Channels programmer Bruce Fletcher announced proudly to his opening night audience, "Let the Right One In is perhaps the best genre film since Pan's Labyrinth." By programming Alfredson's Bay Area premiere, Fletcher once again proves how much he loves his San Franciscan audiences and how dedicated he is to bringing us the finest of the world's fantastic films.

Winner of the Best Narrative Feature award at the TriBeCa Film Festival and the Jury Prize for Best Film at the Fantasia Film Festival, and recently awarded at Austin's Fantastic Fest, Let the Right One In came highly recommended by Twitch teammates Todd Brown and Ard Vijn. Todd, in fact, wrote the program capsule for Austin's Fantastic Fest.

At Twitch, Todd writes: "The film is beautifully shot and anchored by very strong performances from its young leads and stands quite easily as the most compelling new entry into vampire mythos in … well, as long as I can remember. An exceptional piece of work." Ard concurs: "[O]ut of all the gory movies I've ever seen, this one is without a doubt the sweetest. And out of all the sweet movies I've ever seen this one is without a doubt the goriest!" Before resigning from the Twitch team, Blake Ethridge scored an enviable interview with Alfredson. Todd couldn't leave to the Sitges Film Festival without posting Magnolia's new U.S. theatrical trailer for the film.

If their genre savvy doesn't convince you, then check out Boyd van Hoeij's (somewhat spoilerish) review at europeanfilms.net who admits that—though "quiet, touching and poetic are not normally terms associated with vampire films, … there are no better words to describe Let the Right One In." Laura Kern in the current September/October issue of Film Comment likewise sings the films praises: "Vampire lore, which has held its ground within pop culture since the creatures of the night's fangs were first bared even pre–Bram Stoker, and has been enjoying a distinct upswing of late, rarely comes across as inspired and alive as it does in Tomas Alfredson's exquisitely crafted Let the Right One In, written by John Ajvide Lindqvist, adapted from his own bestselling novel." More importantly, she warns that Let the Right One In might end up being the next "casualty of Hollywood's rampant impulse to remake (i.e., in most cases, vandalize) every halfway-decent horror import in sight" as Hammer Films has tagged Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) to spearhead the remake, even though "[t]he mystery is why it's not obvious to all that there's simply no room for improvement with this one."

I'd have to agree that I don't envy Reeves the commercial task. At Drifting, filmmaker David Lowery wholeheartedly defends the film's "incomplete androgyny" as a "quite nearly perfect bit of genre filmmaking", even "the punchline of the climactic shot that could technically be deemed in bad taste"; a "final set piece" that Film Threat asserts "uses visuals in a fresh, inventive, and startling combination that will be talked about for years to come." I can't say any more. It's an anticipated comeuppance that deserves to be enjoyed on its own merits, and enjoy it you will.

In fact I'm completely reluctant to cull out the film's most intriguing details because they should be experienced firsthand. But the imprint that lingers with me is that of the hand on the windowpane; the plea for access. Eli at Oskar's window asking to be let in from a snowy night; Oskar at the window looking out, the warmth of his hand leaving moisture on the cold pane. This longstanding trope that vampires must be invited over the threshold recontextualizes the belief that it is not necessarily evil you are inviting into your heart. All I will say about the film's final scene is that the beautiful look of protectiveness in Eli's eyes and the sheepish smile on Oskar's face invites questions about their own amor fati.

10/14/08 UPDATE: As anticipated, Let the Right One In won Audience Favorite for Best Feature at this year's Dead Channels.

Cross-published on Twitch.

DEAD CHANNELS 2008 STARTS THURSDAY!

Just in case you've been on the nod, WAKE UP!! It's time to blow your mind with 20 feature films and 20 shorts from 10 countries in 10 days! You've seen the rest—so brace yourself for the best! Right off, Dead Channels 2008 Opening Gala Party is Thursday, Oct 2nd at 9:00PM at the Vortex Room.

San Francisco's award-winning Dead Channels Film Festival is Northern California's premier celebration of independent and international fantastic filmmaking. The Festival brings entertaining and intelligent science-fiction, fantasy, horror, action, exploitation and a few weird unclassifiable cinematic gems to audiences in the Bay Area.

Their inaugural 2007 festival and their Summer series—White Hot 'N' Warped Wednesdays—paved the path to being awarded the 2008 "Best of the Bay" by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. The 2008 festival runs from October 2nd-10th and they're brimming with anticipation.

Dead Channels showcases a diverse selection of amazing fantastic films from around the globe—often presented by the artists who made them. World and U.S. premieres will play alongside global festival favorites and select retrospective titles. The programming ranges from classic science fiction and fantasy to the defiantly non-mainstream adult offerings they unveil at midnight. Incredible movies, outrageous parties, and the City of San Francisco itself, guarantee a truly memorable week-long celebration of mind-bending fantastic films.

This is important enough that I'm going to repost my previous write-up just in case you have the attention span of a gnat (with some tasty update morsels in case you have a memory like a steel trap)! Drop by the Dead Channels website for the complete schedule, detailed film information, trailers and advance tickets. All films will have tickets available at the door!

The Opening Night Film on Friday, October 3 at 8:00PM is Tomas Alfredson's Swedish vampire flick Let the Right One In (Låt den Rätte Komma in). Winner of the Best Narrative Feature award at the TriBeCa Film Festival and the Jury Prize for Best Film at the Fantasia Film Festival, Let the Right One In comes highly recommended by Twitch teammates Todd Brown and Ard Vijn.

Todd writes: "The film is beautifully shot and anchored by very strong performances from its young leads and stands quite easily as the most compelling new entry into vampire mythos in … well, as long as I can remember. An exceptional piece of work." Ard writes: "[O]ut of all the gory movies I've ever seen, this one is without a doubt the sweetest. And out of all the sweet movies I've ever seen this one is without a doubt the goriest!" Before resigning from the Twitch team, Blake Ethridge scored an interview with Alfredson. Todd couldn't leave to the Sitges Film Festival without posting Magnolia's new U.S. theatrical trailer for the film and if that doesn't get you scurrying down to the Roxie, then you're just a cold fish.

If the genre specialists at Twitch still haven't convinced you, then check out Boyd van Hoeij's (somewhat spoilerish) review at europeanfilms.net who admits that—though "quiet, touching and poetic are not normally terms associated with vampire films, … there are no better words to describe Let the Right One In." Laura Kern in the current September/October issue of Film Comment likewise sings the films praises: "Vampire lore, which has held its ground within pop culture since the creatures of the night's fangs were first bared even pre–Bram Stoker, and has been enjoying a distinct upswing of late, rarely comes across as inspired and alive as it does in Tomas Alfredson's exquisitely crafted Let the Right One In, written by John Ajvide Lindqvist, adapted from his own bestselling novel." More importantly, she warns that Let the Right One In might end up being the next "casualty of Hollywood's rampant impulse to remake (i.e., in most cases, vandalize) every halfway-decent horror import in sight" as Hammer Films has been tagged to spearhead the remake, even though "[t]he mystery is why it's not obvious to all that there's simply no room for improvement with this one."

The Closing Night Film on Thursday, October 9, 8:00PM will be Jennifer Chambers Lynch's Surveillance, produced by her father David Lynch, and starring Julia Ormond, Bill Pullman, Michael Ironside, and French Stewart. Todd announced this one at Twitch back in May along with the trailer. As Bruce explains, "Everyone is lying. Witnesses fabricate stories for two FBI agents (Ormond and Pullman) who arrive to investigate a brutal murder spree that may involve members of the corrupt local police force, headed by the legendary Michael Ironside. Jennifer Lynch's follow up to the much maligned Boxing Helena is an action-packed, clever, violent, strange and cruel, neo-noir FBI procedural thriller. It'll get under your skin."

Dead Channels will feature three world premieres, including Justin Paul Ritter's A Gothic Tale, narrated by Roddy (They Live) Piper. A Gothic Tale is a clever, horrific melting pot of three classic (and notoriously morbid) gothic tales: Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" and Robert Louis Stevenson's "Markheim". Justin Paul Ritter's follow-up to KatieBird is an over-the-top, old-school, and bone chilling night at the movies that will haunt you long after you exit the theater. Screening at the Roxie Film Center on Sunday, October 5, at 10:00PM, and Monday, October 6, 6:00PM.

David Gregory's Plague Town is the second world premiere. Gregory, producer of Jim van Bebber's The Manson Family, hits the bull's-eye with his narrative directorial debut. Plague Town is a scary, gory, freaky old-school horror movie about a family that gets lost in the rural countryside in Ireland. Fangoria's Michael Gingold offers a preview: "Even as it has become a cliché of the new horror wave for filmmakers to say that their projects aim for the spirit of '70s chillers, movies that genuinely evoke that veneer are few and far between. There's a certain vibe about the decade's drive-in fare that's hard to define and harder to capture... One new production that gets it, and gets it right, is Plague Town." Plague Town screens at the Roxie Film Center on Friday, October 3, 4:00PM and Saturday, October 4, 8:00PM.

The third world premiere is Jimmy Creamer's Reality Bleed-Through. This movie is really out there. It's an indescribable live action-animation hybrid that plunges headlong into madness, magick, mayhem, cults, pharmaceuticals and an Apocalyptic War on God. And you'll learn to love the Suicide King! The year is unknown. The government has been overthrown by a Sun-Worshipping drug cult. The environment is damaged and the Sun kills. Plagues kill millions. The end of the world will be a relief. This is Reality Bleed-Through. Black magic, psychic driving, flashbacks, harmful and subversive subliminals, hands, cut-ups, no hands, good drugs, Wars on God, deprogramming, live action, dead stasis, bizarre animation, inter-dimensional rips, death-trips, tritones, set the controls for the heart of the sun, mutilation, suicide fuck, reality cult, psychotic break, psychotic break, psychotic break. Screening Saturday, October 4, 6:00PM at the Roxie Film Center.

Dead Channels will also feature the U.S. Theatrical premiere of Nicolas Roeg's Puffball, starring Kelly Reilly, Miranda Richardson, Rita Tushingham, and Donald Sutherland. Nicolas Roeg, the legendary cinematic architect of mind-bending, sexually charged classics such as The Man Who Fell to Earth, Performance, Walkabout, Insignificance, Eureka, Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession, and Castaway finds fertile material for his unique sensibility in his latest work. Puffball, adapted from Fay Weldon's book by her son Dan, is concerned with fertility, witches, family and the Old Gods. The film also reunites Roeg with Donald Sutherland for the first time since their collaboration with Julie Christie in the masterpiece Don't Look Now. Screening Sunday, October 5, 8:00PM at San Francisco's Roxie Film Center and Thursday, October 9, 6:30PM at Oakland's Parkway Speakeasy. The trailer can be found on YouTube.

Another Dead Channels U.S. theatrical premiere is Johnny Kervorkian's The Disappeared, an intelligent suspenseful thriller starring Neil Murphy, Harry Treadaway and Tom Felton. This tragic tale of a family's loss is emotionally heart-wrenching, extremely well-acted and scary as Hell. Teenaged Matthew has lost his mind. He is directly responsible for the disappearance and probable death of his younger brother, Tom, and he can't bear the responsibility. It's cracking him apart. When Matthew returns home from the Hospital, his father Jake valiantly attempts to contain his anger; but his calm façade is beginning to crack. Then young Tom returns from the grave and he's not alone. Screening at the Roxie Film Center on Monday, October 6, 8:00PM and Thursday, October 9, 6:00PM.

As if all that isn't enough, Dead Channels will also feature four other highlights. Frank Henenlotter, the director of cult classics Brain Damage, Frankenhooker and the Basket Case trilogy, returns to the big screen with Bad Biology, a terrifically twisted tale of sex, evolution, masturbation, procreation, God and monstrous genitalia. Welcome to Frank Henenlotter's amazing world—straight up, no chaser. Screening Friday, October 3, 10:00PM at S.F.'s Roxie Film Center and Thursday, October 9, 9:15PM at Oakland's Parkway Speakeasy.

Canadian directors Darren Curtis and Pat Kiely offer up Who is KK Downey? Not long ago, the Art World was enthralled with (and scandalized by) J.T. Leroy. Now it's KK Downey's turn! This may be the funniest film of the year and particularly relevant to San Francisco audiences. Who is KK Downey? is the story of two low-rent artistes who decide to make a name for themselves. Terrance wants to be a Rock Star, while Theo dreams of publishing Truck Stop Hustler—a sordid look at the street-life of KK Downey, an abused teenaged junkie male prostitute. Screening at the Roxie Film Center on Sunday, October 5, 6:00PM and Tuesday, October 7, 6:00PM.

Yoshihiro Nishimura's Tokyo Gore Police is the most talked-about genre film of the year. Put on a bright red raincoat and brace yourself for this relentless new high-water mark for stunningly beautiful, jaw-droppingly perverted, hyper-kinetic Japanese cyber-punk carnage. Mere words can never do this justice—you have to see it to believe it. Unforgettable and beautiful set pieces litter the screen. Tokyo is burning! Set in a future-world where the police have been privatized and bitter self-mutilation is so casual that advertising is often specially geared to the "cutter" demographic, this is the story of samurai sword-wielding Ruka and her mission to avenge her father's assassination. The Tokyo Police Corporation is locked in a bloody war with the "Engineers." These unstoppable, genetically modified super-criminals can biofuse their open wounds with weapons, turning self-mutilation into a deadly combat form. Screening Saturday, October 4, 10:00PM at the Roxie Film Center. We wrote this one up earlier at The Evening Class at its Another Hole in the Head appearance. Kudos to Dead Channels for bringing it back!

John Bergin wrote, directed and animated From Inside, a darkly surrealistic, almost hallucinatory adaptation of his graphic novel of the same name. He worked for 2½ years to put his vision in motion on screen, and Dead Channels is honored to present the final result—a beautifully animated, yet often disturbing, epic post-apocalyptic science-fiction tale. Screening at the Roxie Film Center on Friday, October 3, 6:00PM and Sunday, October 5, 2:00PM.

A chill is in the air (and the snails on the move) as unrequited, obsessive love is swept up in a sea of blood. Dead Channels is delighted to present Epitaph, the internationally critically acclaimed, stunningly shot and directed, Korean box office sensation from the Jung Brothers. The year is 1942; the Korean capital of Kyung Sung is occupied by the Japanese; and the Anseng Hospital lies in the center of the city, representing the twin glories of Japanese Imperialism and Western modernization. But mysterious things are happening at the hospital: An intern, romantically drawn to a corpse, is instead bound by his parents to marry a girl whom he has never met; a traumatized little girl, the lone survivor of a horrific car crash, is tortured by bloody visions; and a married couple, who are doctors, desperately try to manage their colleagues' behaviors but find themselves investigating a series of brutal murders. As the stories unfold and secrets are revealed, the hospital and its staff descend into a dark abyss from which they may never return. Screening one night only at the Roxie Film Center on Tuesday, October 7, 8:00PM.

Dead Channels kicks off its midnight series with Ryan Nicholson's Gutterballs, a crazy throwback to 80s wanton bloody excess! Hold ON!!!! A brutally sadistic rape leads to a series of bizarre gory murders during a midnight disco bowl-a-rama at a popular bowling alley. One by one, players of two teams meet blood-drenched gruesome deaths at the hand of a black bowling-gloved masked killer. By sunrise, this alley runs red with blood. WARNING: this film is fiercely politically incorrect, gory, tasteless and often extremely hilarious. However, it may also be considered terribly offensive by the humor-impaired (and the particularly devout will recognize it as a sign of the impending End Times). Screening Friday, October 3, 11:45PM at the Roxie Film Center.

An homage to German Expressionist silent films, Karla Jean Davis's feature film debut Golgotha is the memoir of an evil sorceress's life at the top … alone. Once the most powerful sorceress of all time, age has reduced this once-feared sorceress to a sick, old woman on her deathbed. In a rare moment of candor (and humility), she confesses her life story to a goblin named Minion, the last of her loyal footservants. The story's end might be more than she bargained for. Golgotha is a reverse fairytale on a particularly expressionistic stage and a hand-crafted epic labor of love. Screening at the Roxie Film Center on Saturday, October 4, 2:00PM and Wednesday, October 8, 6:00PM.

In conjunction with Dead Channels, Cosmic Hex is offering screenings of four fantastic vintage classics. The first is Joseph Sargent's 1970 Colossus: The Forbin Project. This is the granddaddy of all computer run amok films. The film's climax is unsettling, but no more so than the actual state of world affairs in 1970. Charles Forbin designs the "first" Artificial Intelligence. Shortly after being turned on, it detects Guardian, its previously unknown Soviet counterpart. The computers insist that they be allowed to communicate. What happens when two supercomputers get together and realize just how sad is the human race that they serve? The logical conclusion, of course! The best way to defend humanity is to protect it from itself … by ruling it. Colossus: The Forbin Project will be presented in full cinemascope and blinding technicolor. Screening Sunday, October 5, 4:00PM at the Roxie Film Center.

The second is Condenados a vivir (Cutthroats Nine, 1972) by Spanish director Joaquin Luis Romero Marchent. Commonly referred to as "The Most Violent Western EVER Filmed", this incredibly hard to find film would feel more at home with the title, "Most Vicious Western." Gold hunting, double-crossing, robbing, raping, arson-loving, chain ganged criminals face off with the last vestige of law and mother nature. The superb filmmaking of this obscure 1972 exploitation film puts it head and shoulders above the rest—stop crying and run home to your mommy with your "G" Rated Fulci westerns! Screening Tuesday, October 7, 10:00PM at the Roxie Film Center.

The third is Robert Ground's 1967 Weird World of LSD. Part Drug Scare "information" façade with promises of titillating glimpses into the forbidden … part something else. It would have been utterly disappointing if this tent road show picture on the horrors of LSD had been just a clone of past reefer and cocaine exploiters. It's something else all right! Hold on for seemingly endless gratuitous scenes demonstrating how cosmic and magical the world can be on a few tabs. Drop out, but not too far—feel the green, taste the purple! Screening Saturday, October 4, 11:45PM at the Roxie Film Center.

Last but not least is Elio Petri's 10th Victim (1965) starring Marcello Mastroianni, Ursula Andress, and Elsa Martinelli. Sean Axmaker writes: "It's like Fellini gone ballistic." What happens when drugged-out '60s swingers in a totalitarian future play "The Most Dangerous Game"? Your mind could never envision the description-defying scenarios that unfold in this unclassifiable gem. A nearly impossible to find film print that almost defines "Must See!" A dark, psychedelic, scifi, comedy trip! Screening Thursday, October 9, 10:00PM at the Roxie Film Center.