The Book of Birdie[/caption]
The 3rd edition of Final Girls Berlin Film Festival will take place in Berlin, Germany from February1st to the 3rd, 2018, showcasing horror films that were directed, written, and/or produced by women and non-binary filmmakers. The 2018 Final Girls Berlin Film Festival lineup consists of 5 feature films, six curated short blocks, a horror storyboarding workshop, a talk on vampires and women, and a filmmaker panel.
Festival co-director Eli Lewy says “this year we have selected a range of unnerving feature films – most of which are also exclusive German premieres!” Fellow co-director Sara Neidorf adds “we’re excited for another three days of communal fear and challenging discussions with filmmakers and spectators. Underground horror cinema is alive and well with the works of women who are steadily reshaping the landscape of the genre.”
The opening night feature is Anami Tara Shucart and Elizabeth E. Schuch’s offering THE BOOK OF BIRDIE. When a fragile, imaginative teenager is placed in a remote convent, will her unusual obsessions and hallucinations become a mark of sainthood or dark heresy? Reserved teen Birdie is sequestered to a life of religious servitude by her grandmother, in the hope that it will suppress the young girl‘s dark thoughts. Now far from home, her interests remain far from pious, as she develops a fascination with blood and sparks a romance with the groundkeeper’s daughter. This haunting and aesthetically arresting directorial debut of Elizabeth E. Schuch features an all-woman cast. UK, dir. Elizabeth E. Schuch (2017, German Premiere)
A mother’s grief turns to paranoia when she begins to suspect her eccentric neighbors are involved in a satanic pact. Starring Gaby Hoffmann (Transparent, Girls) and Ingrid Jungermann (WOMEN WHO KILL), and paying homage to ROSEMARY’S BABY, this queer psychological horror LYLE, brings the viewer through a nightmarish journey of gaslighting, loss, loneliness, and mistrust. USA, dir. Stewart Thorndike (2014, Berlin Premiere)
Iona and her mother are new in town and excited about starting a new chapter in their lives, but things don’t go as they hoped in this off-kilter, heart-wrenching film about two generations of outcasts. This ‘social horror’ film PIN CUSHION world premiered at the 2017 Venice Film Festival. UK, dir. Deborah Haywood (2017, German Premiere)
A pitch black, wryly British comedy, PREVENGE follows Ruth, a pregnant woman on a killing spree that’s as funny as it is vicious. It’s her misanthropic unborn baby dictating Ruth’s actions, holding society responsible for the absence of a father. The child speaks to Ruth from the womb, coaching her to lure and ultimately kill her unsuspecting victims. Struggling with her conscience, loneliness, and a strange strain of prepartum madness, Ruth must ultimately choose between redemption and destruction at the moment of motherhood. UK, dir. Alice Lowe (2016)
MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND is a psychological thriller set in the world of undocumented female immigrants hoping to make a life in New York City. Shot on Super 16mm with an intimate, voyeuristic sensibility, MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND chronicles one harrowing day in the life of Luciana, a young woman struggling to make ends meet while striving to escape her past. As Luciana’s day unfolds, she is whisked, physically and emotionally, through a series of troublesome and unforeseeable extremes. USA, Dir. Ana Asensio (2017, German Premiere)
Prevenge
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Women Directed + Horror Themed 3rd Final Girls Berlin Film Festival Announces Lineup, Opens with THE BOOK OF BIRDIE
[caption id="attachment_24277" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] The Book of Birdie[/caption]
The 3rd edition of Final Girls Berlin Film Festival will take place in Berlin, Germany from February1st to the 3rd, 2018, showcasing horror films that were directed, written, and/or produced by women and non-binary filmmakers. The 2018 Final Girls Berlin Film Festival lineup consists of 5 feature films, six curated short blocks, a horror storyboarding workshop, a talk on vampires and women, and a filmmaker panel.
Festival co-director Eli Lewy says “this year we have selected a range of unnerving feature films – most of which are also exclusive German premieres!” Fellow co-director Sara Neidorf adds “we’re excited for another three days of communal fear and challenging discussions with filmmakers and spectators. Underground horror cinema is alive and well with the works of women who are steadily reshaping the landscape of the genre.”
The opening night feature is Anami Tara Shucart and Elizabeth E. Schuch’s offering THE BOOK OF BIRDIE. When a fragile, imaginative teenager is placed in a remote convent, will her unusual obsessions and hallucinations become a mark of sainthood or dark heresy? Reserved teen Birdie is sequestered to a life of religious servitude by her grandmother, in the hope that it will suppress the young girl‘s dark thoughts. Now far from home, her interests remain far from pious, as she develops a fascination with blood and sparks a romance with the groundkeeper’s daughter. This haunting and aesthetically arresting directorial debut of Elizabeth E. Schuch features an all-woman cast. UK, dir. Elizabeth E. Schuch (2017, German Premiere)
A mother’s grief turns to paranoia when she begins to suspect her eccentric neighbors are involved in a satanic pact. Starring Gaby Hoffmann (Transparent, Girls) and Ingrid Jungermann (WOMEN WHO KILL), and paying homage to ROSEMARY’S BABY, this queer psychological horror LYLE, brings the viewer through a nightmarish journey of gaslighting, loss, loneliness, and mistrust. USA, dir. Stewart Thorndike (2014, Berlin Premiere)
Iona and her mother are new in town and excited about starting a new chapter in their lives, but things don’t go as they hoped in this off-kilter, heart-wrenching film about two generations of outcasts. This ‘social horror’ film PIN CUSHION world premiered at the 2017 Venice Film Festival. UK, dir. Deborah Haywood (2017, German Premiere)
A pitch black, wryly British comedy, PREVENGE follows Ruth, a pregnant woman on a killing spree that’s as funny as it is vicious. It’s her misanthropic unborn baby dictating Ruth’s actions, holding society responsible for the absence of a father. The child speaks to Ruth from the womb, coaching her to lure and ultimately kill her unsuspecting victims. Struggling with her conscience, loneliness, and a strange strain of prepartum madness, Ruth must ultimately choose between redemption and destruction at the moment of motherhood. UK, dir. Alice Lowe (2016)
MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND is a psychological thriller set in the world of undocumented female immigrants hoping to make a life in New York City. Shot on Super 16mm with an intimate, voyeuristic sensibility, MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND chronicles one harrowing day in the life of Luciana, a young woman struggling to make ends meet while striving to escape her past. As Luciana’s day unfolds, she is whisked, physically and emotionally, through a series of troublesome and unforeseeable extremes. USA, Dir. Ana Asensio (2017, German Premiere)
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2017 Boston Underground Film Festival Unleashes First Wave of Films – PREVENGE, THE VOID, BITCH and More
[caption id="attachment_21176" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]
THE VOID[/caption]
The 19th Boston Underground Film Festival returns to Harvard Square with what the festival describes as a “smorgasbord of phantasmagoria, dark comedy, thrillers, killers, and chillers” from March 22nd through the 26th, 2017.
Veteran actress, co-writer of 2012’s Sightseers, and first-time director/writer/star Alice Lowe’s bloody British baby bump (off) slasher comedy Prevenge will open the festival on Wednesday March 22nd, and filmmaking triple-threat director/writer/actor Marianna Palka’s delightfully disturbing dive into dissociative doggone delirium, Bitch will close out the festival on March 26th.
Bubbling up from down-under, also coming to Boston fresh from SXSW 2017, is not-to-be-missed Aussie crime thriller Hounds of Love, a masterful feat of tension, terror, and restraint from Perth-based, wildly talented first-time feature filmmaker Ben Young. In stark contrast to some of BUFF’s darker fare, prepare to meet your new obsession with first-time filmmaker Bill Watterson’s Slamdance 2017 standout Dave Made a Maze, which will beguile and a-maze with its hilarious odyssey through one man’s intricately crafted, booby trapped, living room box fort labyrinth; awe-inspiring stop-motion animation and strong lulz await.
BUFF will also host the East Coast Premiere of 68 Kill from mad genius Trent Haaga, director of BUFF’s 2011 Director’s Choice Award-winner Chop and writer of 2013’s Cheap Thrills & 2008’s Deadgirl. Haaga’s highly anticipated punk rock heist film unites BUFF regulars AnnaLynne McCord & Matthew Gray Gubler in the ultimate highway to hell road film.
2017 BOSTON UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL FIRST WAVE OF FILMS
BITCH – East Coast Premiere Marianna Palka | USA | 2017 Caged in the suburbs of our discontent, a woman (Marianna Palka) snaps and enters a fugue state, consumed by the psyche of a vicious dog. Her philandering, stay-at-work husband (Jason Ritter) must grudgingly assume the role of family caretaker, forcing him to engage with his four children and sister-in-law (Jaime King) as they attempt to strengthen their familial unit and entice mom back to reality. Marianna Palka writes, directs, and stars in her bitingly funny and profound fourth feature. DAVE MADE A MAZE – East Coast Premiere Bill Watterson | USA | 2017 Dave (Nick Thune) is an artist who has yet to complete anything of significance in his short career; out of frustration, he builds an elaborate box fort in his living room. When his girlfriend and friends (including Kirsten Vangsness, Adam Busch, and Meera Rohit Kumbhani) enter against his protests, he must save them all from a series of fantastical pitfalls, booby traps, and creatures of his own creation. Actor Bill Watterson writes and directs his hilarious and idiosyncratic first feature. HOUNDS OF LOVE – East Coast Premiere Ben Young | Australia | 2016 In Ben Young’s tense, chilling feature debut, 17-year-old Vicki Maloney is randomly abducted from a suburban street by a disturbed couple and held prisoner in their home. As she observes the volatile dynamic between her captors, she soon realizes the key to survival lies in driving a wedge between them. PREVENGE – East Coast Premiere Alice Lowe | UK | 2016 In her directorial debut, Alice Lowe (Sightseers, Hot Fuzz, Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place) writes, directs and stars in a pitch black comedic tale of vengeance about seven-months-pregnant Widow Ruth and the unborn serial killer that compels her on her homicidal rampage. SAINT BERNARD – North American Premiere Gabe Bartalos | USA/France | 2013 Prolific creature designer Gabe Bartalos (Brain Damage, Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, Gremlins 2, and the Leprechaun series) crafts a phantasmagoric vision of a classical music conductor descending into insanity with his sophomore feature. Seemingly vanished from a short-lived run on the festival circuit in 2014, BUFF is proud to give this must-see nightmare, and the visionary filmmaker who created it, a proper North American premiere. 68 KILL – East Coast Premiere Trent Haaga | USA | 2017 Trent Haaga (writer of Deadgirl, Cheap Thrills) returns to the director’s chair following 2011’s Chop with a punk-rock after hours thriller about femininity, masculinity and the theft of $68,000. When Liza (AnnaLynne McCord) asks her boyfriend Chip (Matthew Gray Gubler) to help her rob her wealthy sugar daddy, he can’t say no. Once they step into the man’s home, Chip & Liza embark on a breakneck roadtrip to hell. Adapted from Bryan Smith’s 2013, no-holds-barred crime novel of the same name. THE VOID – New England Premiere Jeremy Gillespie, Steven Kostanski | Canada | 2016 ASTRON-6’s Jeremy Gillespie & Steven Kostanski return with a Carpenteresque saga of brutal, cosmic dread, packed with creatures straight out of hell. In the middle of a routine patrol, officer Daniel Carter (Aaron Poole) happens upon a blood-soaked figure limping down a deserted stretch of road in the middle of the night. When he rushes the young man to a nearby rural hospital, he finds that patients and personnel are transforming into something… inhuman. As the horror intensifies, Carter must lead the other survivors into the subterranean depths of the hospital in a desperate bid to save their lives and end the nightmare before it’s too late. TRINITY – Boston Premiere Skip Shea | USA | 2016 Award-winning Massachusetts-based filmmaker, writer, artist and actor Skip Shea brings to life a deeply personal and disturbing first feature based on the true story about a moment in the life of a clergy abuse survivor. While at a coffee shop, a man accidentally bumps into the priest who abused him when he was a child, triggering a surreal, PTSD-induced dissociative moment that sends him on a twisted journey through his past.
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Alice Lowe’s Pregnancy Horror Comedy PREVENGE to be Released in The U.S. | TRAILER
[caption id="attachment_15101" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]
Prevenge by Alice Lowe[/caption]
Alice Lowe’s pregnancy horror comedy PREVENGE will be released in the U.S. by Shudder, and will open theatrically in New York and Los Angeles from March 24th, shortly after screening at the South By Southwest Film Festival.
PREVENGE marks the directorial debut from Lowe (star and writer of Ben Wheatley’s “Sightseers”), who is a true triple threat, writing, directing, and acting in the film during her own real-life pregnancy. The film received praise from critics and audiences alike at the Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals, as well as a British Independent Film Award nomination for Best Directorial Debut.
A pitch black, wryly British horror comedy from the mind of Alice Lowe (“Sightseers,” “Hot Fuzz,” “Paddington”), PREVENGE follows Ruth, a pregnant woman on a killing spree, that’s as funny as it is vicious. It’s her misanthropic unborn baby dictating Ruth’s actions, holding society responsible for the absence of a father. The child speaks to Ruth from the womb, coaching her to lure and ultimately kill her unsuspecting victims. Struggling with her conscience, loneliness, and a strange strain of prepartum madness, Ruth must ultimately choose between redemption and destruction at the moment of motherhood.
Also featuring a remarkable ‘70s-throwback synth score by Toydrum and starring Gemma Whelan (“Game of Thrones”), Kate Dickie (“The Witch”) and Jo Hartley (“Eddie the Eagle”), PREVENGE was called “Uniquely frightening and funny” by Variety , adding “Lowe’s performance is a marvel.”The Guardian praised it as “gruesomely successful,” saying it “provides a nightmarish satirical twist on post- and antenatal depression.” The Hollywood Reporter said Lowe evokes “a kind of deadpan, British kitchen-sink Dario Argento” and praised the film’s “exhilarating disregard for conventional morality.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bEPU_58akI