Doors at 6:30pm, screening at 7pm
Join us for the first of two nights of cinematic horror with a screening of Vampir-Cuadecuc by Pere Portabella, preceded by Peter Tscherkassky’s Outer Space, and Takeshi Murata’s Untitled (Silver) - three works which transform material from horror films (Jess Franco’s Count Dracula, Sidney J. Furie’s The Entity, and Mario Bava’s Mask of Satan).
VAMPIR-CUADECUC (1971, 65 min) is Spanish filmmaker Pere Portabella’s version of Dracula, filmed entirely on the set of Jess Franco’s 1970 film Count Dracula, featuring performances by Christopher Lee, Soledad Miranda and Herbert Lom. Vampir-Cuadecuc mixes making-of footage with an investigation into the figure of the vampire. Both playful and deadly serious, with high-contrast black-and-white cinematography and an electronic soundtrack, “it is a film within a film, a discourse within a discourse, in other words, a ‘bloodsucking film’ of another.” (Portabella)
In UNTITLED (SILVER) (2006, 11 min), Takeshi Murata subjects a snippet of footage from a vintage horror film (Mario Bava's 1960 Mask of Satan, featuring Barbara Steele) — to his exacting yet almost violent digital manipulations. The seething black and white imagery constantly decomposes and reconstitutes itself, slipping seductively between abstraction and recognition.
OUTER SPACE (1999, 10 min) Reworking footage from Sidney J. Furie’s 1982 supernatural horror film The Entity, where an unseen malevolent spirit violently assaults a woman (Barbara Hershey), Tscherkassky creates a phantasmagoric work where “both the physical space and the surface of the projection begin to splinter, collapse and rupture. Spaces enclose and enfold, the female subject multiplies and shatters across the screen, and the film itself screeches and tears as the sprockets and optical soundtrack violently invade the fictional world.” (Rhys Graham, Senses of Cinema).
Projected from a 16mm print, courtesy of Canyon Cinema.
This event is proudly supported by the City of Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods.