FOLK HORROR OF THE BRITISH ISLES FILM FESTIVAL!
PENDA'S FEN + Magic Tuber Stringband, Sunday, August 11th, 8pm
THE WICKER MAN + Beverly Ketch & Friends! Friday, August 16th, 8pm
ENYS MEN + Neonach, Friday, August, 23rd, 8pm
The Wicker Man (The Final Cut, 4K Restoration, 94 mins),has had an enduring fascination for audiences since its release in 1973. A brilliant conspiracy-thriller set during the colorful festivities of May Day, directorRobin Hardy'satmospheric use of location, unsettling imagery and haunting soundtrack gradually builds to one of the most terrifying and iconic climaxes in modern cinema. After receiving an anonymous letter about a missing 12-year-old girl, devoutly Christian Police Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) travels by seaplane to a remote Scottish island to investigate. But the islanders welcome neither his badge nor religious devotion, for Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee) and his devoted followers worship only the pagan gods of old - and those gods demand a sacrifice to preserve the annual fruit harvest on which their economy depends. Howie fears for the missing girl's life and follows every possible lead to find her - despite the islanders' interference - before she becomes a human sacrificial lamb.
CRITICAL ACCLAIM:
"The Wicker Man is the third film in the “Unholy Trinity of Films That Gave Birth to Folk Horror,” following The Witchfinder General (1968) and The Blood On Satan’s Claw (1971). Now a cult classic, it situates horror at the boundaries of sanity and puts the moral high ground up for grabs. Emerging just after the death rattle of the utopian ideal of the 1960s, The Wicker Man reflects profound divisions: it’s a decisively British interpretation of the failure of hippie culture at the same time that it calls traditional authority into question; it challenges a reluctance to return to nature and the generation’s abandonment of community in favor of new individualism; and it both embraces and discards community, nature, sex, religion, tradition, capital, and the value of human life." -Film School Rejects
OUR EVENING BEGINS WITH MUSIC FROM THE WICKER MAN SOUNDTRACK PERFORMED BY BEVERLY KETCH & FRIENDS!
Beverly Ketch is a poet, singer & lyricist known for her work as vocalist and songwriter with the groups Stella Kola and The Bunwinkies. She is a co-creator of The Lovelights, a multimedia collective investigating joy & magic which began as a children's television program and evolved into a series of all ages events that combine song, dance, theatre & brilliantly costumed pageantry to share merriment & wonder across Franklin County. Bev is also a leading light behind the annual Fairy House Day in which a local park is transformed into a welcoming and delightful daydream populated with dazzling Fair Folk and beautiful singing mermaids. Her poetry and lyrics are often informed by her deep passion for the Tarot and she has developed an uncanny ability to combine the prosaic with the mystical to a very mesmerizing effect. Her talent for extracting light from darkness (and vice versa) and for revealing the mystery that lurks inside the "normal" has spread a joyful energy that echoes across the valley.
Jeremy Pisani is a masterful multi instrumentalist who is fluent in styles ranging from gentle Brazilian nylon string guitar to searing electric psychedelia, complex progressive rock in the Italian tradition to fluid, atmospheric synthesizer compositions. He is a cinephile with an astounding knowledge of film & film history with a special focus on the avant garde, underground/transgressive, grindhouse & horror. He provided a wonderfully dark and ominous soundtrack to Nick Verdi's acclaimed 2021 slasher "co*ckazoid" and he's spent many years as projectionist & jack of all trades at the Amherst Cinema, one of the very few oasis left for film lovers in Western Massachusetts. Pisani collaborates with Ketch in Stella Kola (both were once members of the large free formcollective Jow Jow) and has worked with the improvisational psychedelic group Sunburned Hand of the Man and the morbid, electro-horror wave band Mozzaleum. In 2008, an album was released of his earlier solo recordings under the name Red Favorite which is heralded by connoisseurs as an absolute jewel of the "Free Folk / New Weird America" genre.
More About the "FINAL CUT" 4K Restoration
Starring Edward Woodward, horror film legend Christopher Lee, stalwart Hammer vampiress Ingrid Pitt, and Swedish blonde bombshell/Bond Girl Britt Ekland (Man with the Golden Gun), THE WICKER MANis regarded as a quintessential psychological thriller, with the search for its integral version one of cinema history’s great detective hunts. Butchered by its doomed UK distributor to fit on double bills, with its original negative apparently lost, THE WICKER MAN has gathered a devoted fan base over the past five decades, with the complete version their Holy Grail. Some missing scenes were recovered from an obsolete one-inch broadcast tape, but over the years there were rumors of complete 35mm prints floating around. In 2013, the search intensified when worldwide rights holder Studiocanal initiated a Facebook campaign to recover the missing 35mm material. This culminated in a 2K digital restoration for the most complete theatrical version, which director Robin Hardy anointed as “the final cut.” And now, in honor of the film’s 50th anniversary, a new 4K restoration will screen across the U.S. and Canada, including here at Epsilon Spires!
