The London Underground Film Sessions return to The Horse Hospital for the last time before the London Underground Film Festival in December.

This session will include shorts curated by Robert W. Monk and David Sharkey, and the UK launch of Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’ book Rape-Revenge Films; A Critical Study, including a feature film selected by the author.

PROGRAMME:

One of the people behind Stay Beautiful, Black Plastic, and Self-Non-Self, DJ Suicide Ally has DJed extensively throughout the UK, including sets at Bestival, Future Brain, Reeperbahn and Whitby Gothic Weekend, and will be playing a selection of tracks between films.

THE CALL OF CTHULHU (2005, 47mins) Andrew Leman/Sean Branney

“In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”

This inventive and remarkably atmospheric piece is one of the (very) few adaptations to successfully bring the wonder and mystery of weird fiction writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s spell-binding words to the screen. Based on one of Lovecraft’s most famed stories (and the starting point for the whole Cthulhu Mythos) Leman and Branney’s ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ is imagined here as a 1920’s silent movie. Filmed in ‘Mythoscope’ – a mix of vintage and modern film techniques – and featuring a powerful soundtrack, this haunting mini-epic does full justice to Lovecraft’s imaginative fiction and will leave audiences hypnotized. Horror fans, HPL fans and fans of film itself will not want to miss this!

BOOK LAUNCH: RAPE REVENGE FILMS – A CRITICAL STUDY

Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Often considered the lowest depth to which the cinema can plummet, rape-revenge films have been dismissed as exploitative and sensational, catering to a demented demographic. Only on rare occasions as ‘The Virgin Spring’, ‘The Accused’, ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ and ‘Deliverance’ has the rape-revenge movie supposedly transcended what is commonly assumed to be its intrinsically exploitative nature and moved into the mainstream. This critical overview challenges and reassesses that viewpoint by exploring the diversity of the rape-revenge category across genres, national contexts and historical periods and argues for both their longevity and the elasticity of the trope. The author discusses an array of films directed by both noteworthy and lesser known directors, and claims that diverse and often contradictory treatments of sexual violence can exist simultaneously. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas is a film writer and researcher from Melbourne, Australia. Her work has appeared in several print and online publications, including Australia’s ’Metro’ magazine, ‘Limina’, ‘Screening the Past’, ‘Bright Lights’ and ‘Cinephile’. She is currently completing a PhD on horror film, and ‘Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study’ is her first book.

Refreshments by Baking annd Alchemy