On October 16th, 2014 at 7pm in the Blue Room, The Light & Sound Machine, along with The Belcourt Theatre and Third Man Records present...
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Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
Jaromil Jires / Czechoslovakia / 1970 / 75m / color / 16mm
A masterwork of the Czech New Wave, Jires' feverish fantasy follows the plight of young Valerie, who on the occasion of her entry into womanhood, finds her idyllic village transformed into a nightmarish carnival of vampires, occult ritual, and magic. Family and friends become possessed and priests become predators - nothing is what it seems in this surrealist exploration of the perils of sexual awakening.
PRECEEDED BY TWO AVANT-HORROR SHORTS:
Outer Space
Peter Tscherkassky / Austria / 1999 / 10m / b&w / 16mm
"A young woman, night, an American feature film. She enters a house, a dark corridor, a thriller. While she forces her way into an unknown space together with the viewer, the cinematographic image-producing processes go off the rails. The rooms telescope into each other, become blurred, while the crackling of the cuts and the background noise - the sound of the film material itself - becomes louder and more penetrating. "The pace becomes frenetic, the woman is being pursued by invisible opponents, pushed against a mirror, walls of glass burst, furniture tilts and the cinematographic apparatus which the heroine begins to attack in blind fury also collapses. The images jump and stutter, the perforation holes tilt into the picture, the sound track implodes in a will o' the wisp destruction scenario - something which only film can do so powerfully. In ten minutes OUTER SPACE races through the unsuspected possibilities of cinematographic errors - a masterpiece."
- Stephan Grissemann
Saint Flournoy Lobos-Logos and the Eastern Europe Fetus Taxing Japan Brides in West Coast Places Sucking Alabama Air
Will Hindle / USA / 1970 / 11m / color / 16mm
Presaging details and intent of the Charles Manson's cult and actions was not meant to be one of this film's greater attributes. It was, however, filmed uncannily months before the facts were known. The resemblance is oblique. The film: the mysticism of a "calling," a journey to be made, a vision in mid-desert to behold and oneness with it all. Filmed in Death Valley.
