A sneak-peak at my GRUESOME new book - available to pre-order.

 

 

 

Release date: November, 30.  Pre-order here.

 

 

 

 

SUSPIRIA with an Intro by Jon Towlson

Nicolas Winding Refn Presents: A special season curated by Nicolas Winding Refn, director of The Neon Demon and Drive.
Plus intro by Jon Towlson-: critic for Starburst Magazine and author of Subversive Horror Cinema: Countercultural Messages of Films from Frankenstein to the Present.

Suspiria. Director: Dario Argento. Italy 1977. 97 mins. Italian with English subtitles.

An American travels to Germany to train at a ballet school, but soon finds herself in labyrinth of murder, madness and black magic. Beautiful and terrifying, Suspiria is one of the greatest horror films ever made.

York City Screen Picturehouse. Thursday 25th August. 9pm.

Further info and tickets here.

States of Terror: Contemporary Horror in World Cinema

From Hollywood to Europe to Asia, the horror film is thriving. With recent international hits like It Follows (2014), The Babadook (2014), Big Bad Wolves (2013), Painless (2012), The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears (2013) and Flu (2013) filmmakers in countries as diverse as USA, Australia, Israel, Spain, France, Japan, Hong Kong, India and South Korea are using the horror genre to address the fears and anxieties of their cultures.

 

In this six week course at York City Screen Picturehouse we investigate contemporary horror cinema around the globe. Focusing on a different national cinema each week, we look at what terrifies the people of these nation states and ways in which horror crosses-over to international audiences. With film clips and discussion, the course will explore the genre’s unique capacity to break cultural boundaries and speak to social, political and personal anxieties in a world cinema context.

 

Each session includes a presentation/lecture followed by a tutorial where discussion is encouraged. Advance viewing is optional; select scenes and montages will be shown during weekly sessions.

 

Course tutor Jon Towlson is a film critic for Starburst Magazine and the author of Subversive Horror Cinema: Countercultural Messages of Films from Frankenstein to the Present (McFarland & Co, 2014); Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Constellations) (Auteur/Columbia University Press, 2016) and The Turn to Gruesomeness in American Horror Films, 1931-1936 (McFarland & Co, 2016)

 

Further info and tickets here.