Kier-La Janisse talks about her book HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN

in conversation with Briony Kidd

$10 (or $20 for both events) buy tickets

Pre-booking recommended

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Celluloid Horror

directed by Ashley Fest, documentary, 2008, Canada, 89 minutes, rated R

Celluloid Horror explores Kier-La Janisse’s tireless crusade to bring obscure cult horror film to the Canadian masses through her independently run international film festival, CineMuerte, ‘cinema of death’, and the obsessive nature required to obtain your goals. CineMuerte, focuses on “artistic integrity over commercialism”.

(Donato Totaro, Professor Concordia University, Editor & Chief, Off Screen Magazine.)

Winner – Audience Choice Award – CineMuerte International Film Festival

Winner – Best Editing Boston Underground Winner & Festival de Cine de Granada

House of Psychotic Women

An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films

Anecdotes and memories interweave with film history, criticism, trivia and confrontational imagery to create a reflective personal history and examination of female madness, both onscreen and off.

God, this woman can write, with a voice and intellect that’s so new. The truth in the most deadly unique way I’ve ever read. - Ralph Bakshi, director of Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic, Fire and Ice, etc.

Fascinating, engaging and lucidly written: an extraordinary blend of deeply researched academic analysis and revealing memoir.- Iain Banks, author of The Wasp Factory

Cinema is full of neurotic personalities, but few things are m ore transfixing than a woman losing her mind onscreen. Horror as a genre provides the most welcoming platform for these histrionics: crippling paranoia, desperate loneliness, masochistic death-wishes, dangerous obsessiveness, apocalyptic hysteria. Unlike her male counterpart - ‘the eccentric’ - the female neurotic lives a shamed existence, making these films those rare places where her destructive emotions get to play. More information.

Kier-La Janisse is a writer and film programmer based in Montreal, Canada. She a film programmer for Fantastic Fest and SF Indie, founder of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies and Editor-in-Chief of Spectacular Optical. She has been a programmer for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, Texas, co-founded Montreal microcinema Blue Sunshine, founded the CineMuerte Horror Film Festival in Vancouver and was the subject of the documentary Celluloid Horror. She has written for Filmmaker, Rue Morgue and Fangoria magazines, has contributed to The Scarecrow Movie Guide (Sasquatch Books, 2004) and Destroy All Movies!! A Complete Guide to Punk on Film (Fantagraphics, 2011), and is the author of A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (FAB Press, 2007) and House of Psychotic Women.

What is Horrormathèque?

Horrormathèque is a screening series hosted by Stranger WIth My Face Horror Film Festival, which is based in Hobart, Tasmania, but sometimes holds events in other cities. Unlike the main festival, it has a broader focus and includes horror films of all kinds, including ones directed by men. It’s about promoting the idea of seeing horror/thriller films communally… with an appreciative crowd, the way they are best seen!