The Void will be hosting two days of action at this year's Beyond Fest. We've created this page as a handy guide, so you can have all of the info you need in one spot.
All of our shows will be at the Shudder Theater (Los Feliz 3), and they are also free to the public, courtesy of Shudder.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2ND:
Join us for:
At 1:30PM: The West Coast Premiere of Kier-La Jannise's documentary WOODLANDS DARK AND DAYS BEWITCHED: A HISTORY OF FOLK HORROR
At 5 PM: Severin's 4K Restoration of ALISON'S BIRTHDAY
This event is considered a double feature, so you only need ONE RSVP to get in to both films. You will be able to RSVP starting at 9am on 10/2 at the link here.
WOODLANDS DARK AND DAYS BEWITCHED: A HISTORY OF FOLK HORROR
What cult film queen Kier-La Janisse did for women and mental health in her pioneering book House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films she does again in WOODLANDS DARK AND DAYS BEWITCHED for folk horror: she turns everything we think we knew about this subject on its head, and makes us smarter and more engaged fans of these enduring, extraordinary films.
Winning the SXSW Audience Award, Janisse is our welcoming yet fearless tour guide as she takes on a three-hour tour into the writhing, historical guts of a category of horror cinema that spans the cerebral and visceral, the spiritual and the deeply, darkly, and frequently blissfully profane.
A detailed filmography, an atlas of the collective consciousness and a deep dive into folk horror traditions and how they have manifested in horror cinema from around the world, Janisse combines fascinating interviews with over fifty people with skin in this age-old game, including filmmakers such as Piers Haggard (BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW), Robert Eggers (THE WITCH), Alice Lowe (PREVENGE), and Lawrence Gordon Clark (director, A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS series), and critics, historians and academics including Kat Ellinger, Abraham Castillo Flores, Sean Hogan, Maisha Wester, Jonathan Rigby, and Adam Scovell. Topped off by captivating animated sequences that feature collage work by Guy Maddin and a score by Jim Williams (A Field in England), believe the hype: WOODLANDS DARK AND DAYS BEWITCHED: A HISTORY OF FOLK HORROR is the must-see horror documentary of the year.
-Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
ALISON'S BIRTHDAY
There’s an ubiquitous trope in Australian horror films that breaks down to the basic equation: city=good, outback/bush=bad. Drenched with colonial anxieties and tensions that the great ‘Out There’ exists in menacing contrast white invader delusions that the ‘In Here’ of urban spaces is somehow what supposedly ‘normal’ Australia is meant to be, the undiscovered treasure ALISON’S BIRTHDAY turns that logic on its head.
Here, the eccentric and proudly European mythological darkness is a product of the city-dwelling middle-classes. Starring MAD MAX’s Joanne Samuel as the eponymous teen, what begins with a few teenage girls dabbling indulging in a beautifully shot seance soon spirals into a full-throttle demonic cult conspiracy as Alison is warned she must conquer the evil Celtic matriarchal spirit Mirne before she turns nineteen.
Living on the glorious New South Wales south coast, by the time that birthday arrives, the orphaned Alison fails to get out of the party her Aunt Jenny (Bunney Brooke) and Uncle Dean (John Bluthal, from DARK CITY and THE FIFTH ELEMENT) have planned for her in Sydney. Little does she know that something much more serious looms in her future than a boring party with elderly relatives as Mirne and her followers have more spectacular, supernatural plans in mind. With a Stonehenge replica that would make SPINAL TAP blush (ALISON’S BIRTHDAY was released three years before), this film provides fascinating insight into the ongoing white Australian cultural identity crisis and simultaneously offers a fun retro folk horror offering from director and writer Ian Coughlin. A highlight of Kier-La Janisse’s documentary WOODLANDS DARK AND DAYS BEWITCHED: A HISTORY OF FOLK HORROR, this hidden jewel is here to thrill and intrigue in equal measure.
-Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 3RD
Join us for...
At 7 PM: The West Coast Premiere of Mondo Macabro's 4K Restoration of DR. CALIGARI with Jerry Stahl, Ladi Von Jansky, Laura Albert, and Stephen Sayadian in-person for a post-film Q&A.
At 10 PM: The West Coast Premiere of Synapse's 4K Restoration of TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD.
These are separate RSVPs, which will become available starting at 9am on 10/3 at the links below.
DR. CALIGARI
Largely unseen since its debut in 1989, DR. CALIGARI returns to the big screen to finally receive the appraise it deserves – a weird, unsettling and yet funny experience, this underground exploitation classic is a loose remake of the original THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI focusing on the treatment of Mrs. Van Houten under Dr. Caligari for a ‘disease of the libido’. Switching the original’s striking black-and-white photography for eye-popping color and kitsch Americana, director Sayadian burrows a satire of excess underneath the skin of an erotic nightmare. Viewer discretion advised.
-Evrim Ersoy
TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD
Never-before-seen on the big screen, the 1972 classic by master filmmaker Amando de Ossorio TOMBS OF THE BLIND DATE returns in an uncut, beautifully restored version from Synapse Films – cowled skeletons of Spanish knights ride again, blinded by crows for their 13th-century savagery causing havoc and violence wherever they go!
-Evrim Ersoy
And, for your convenience, here's the link for the full lineup for Beyond Fest this year.
We can't wait to see you this weekend!