Nothing short of magical. It was transformative for me.
CRUSHED
Australia | 2015 | 111 minutes | Dir: Megan Riakos | Unclassified, no under 16s unless with an adult
TASMANIAN PREMIERE
Crushed is the story of a young woman who returns home to her family vineyard after her father dies in an accident on the winery. But when his death is ruled a murder and her mother becomes the prime suspect she must uncover the truth.
Starring Sarah Bishop, Roxanne Wilson and Les Hill, Crushed was shot on location in the beautiful Australian wine region of Mudgee, New South Wales.
Megan Riakos short film The Shed screened at SWMF 2013. Crushed is her feature film debut.
Megan Riakos will be present for a Q&A hosted by the Australian Director’s Guild’s Rebecca Thomson. This film is co-presented by Fanforce and the ADG.
7 PM, SUNDAY, 17 APRIL
PEACOCK THEATRE, SALAMANCA ARTS CENTRE
TICKETS $18/$16 OR WITH FEST PASS
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Concessions: ADG/MEAA/AWG/TaFA members, Healthcare Card, Seniors Card, under 16s
Spain (English language) | 2015 | 86 minutes | directed by Yolanda Torres | unclassified, no under 16s unless with an adult
AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
A band of criminals is hired to kidnap a wealthy businessman’s daughter, but the plan goes horribly wrong. A mysterious woman named Sara (Claudia Trujillo) propels us through this visceral twist on the haunted house story.
A production from Afilm International Film Workshops, made by students and teachers from this film school located in Sitges.
This film is preceded by the short film Thorn.
Yolanda Torres will be available for Q&A via Skype after the screening.
4.30 PM, SUNDAY, 17 APRIL
PEACOCK THEATRE, SALAMANCA ARTS CENTRE
TICKETS $18/$16 OR WITH FEST PASS
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Concessions: ADG/MEAA/AWG/TaFA members, Healthcare Card, Seniors Card, under 16s
SHOCK AND AWE
Machinations on the Female Grotesque
EMMA VALENTE
One of the co artistic directors of avant garde feminist theatre company: THE RABBLE discusses the aesthetics, politics and difficulties around representing the female body on stage. Using her past productions:
Story of O - an investigation of female sexual and religious sublimation, Frankenstein - a rebellion against the so called natural condition of motherhood and her upcoming production of Joan (a project around the iconography of Joan of Arc) looking at how the female form relates to national identity?
Emma discusses everything from the politics of nudity on stage, how to make a great sex scene, to the feminist translation of the male gaze.
This session is co-presented by Loud Mouth Theatre Company. Emma will be in conversation with Loud Mouth’s Maeve Mhairi Macgregor.
Emma Valente is a multi-discipline theatre artist and the co-artistic director and founder of THE RABBLE.
3.30 PM, SUNDAY, 17 APRIL
FOUNDERS ROOM, SALAMANCA ARTS CENTRE
TICKETS $4/$6 OR WITH FEST PASS
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Concessions: ADG/MEAA/AWG/TaFA members, Healthcare Card, Seniors Card, under 16s
image credit: THE RABBLE
DEIDRE HALL IS THE DEVIL:
Horror and soap opera
JODI McALISTER
Soap opera, as melodrama before it, regularly deals with the weird, the Gothic, and the horrifying, and explores them in a format which is ‘safe’: something which would seem to be antithetical to horror, but might also open up new possibilities for exploring horrifying ideas.
This talk will look at the history of horror and the soap opera, using examples from Dark Shadows, Days of Our Lives, Passions, and The Bold and the Beautiful. It will examine the ways in which the mid-century love affair with the pulp Gothic novel was dealt with and expressed in soap. In particular, it will look at the role of women in horrifying plotlines in soap opera, both as villain and victim. Soap is a space in which some unusual and marginal female identities can be expressed: what does this mean when these identities are embedded in a horrifying context?
Dr Jodi McAlister is a lecturer in English at UTAS. Her academic work focuses on the history of love, sex, and popular culture. Her debut novel Valentine will be published in 2017.
2.30 PM, SUNDAY, 17 APRIL
FOUNDERS ROOM, SALAMANCA ARTS CENTRE
TICKETS $4/$6 OR WITH FEST PASS
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Concessions: ADG/MEAA/AWG/TaFA members, Healthcare Card, Seniors Card, under 16s
MIDNIGHT SHOW
Indonesia (English subtitles) | 2016 | 97 minutes | Dir: Ginanti Rona Tembang Asri | Unclassified, under 18s not admitted | INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE
The staff of a Jakarta movie theatre are annoyed at having to work late to accommodate a small audience for the midnight showing of a horror movie called Child. That’s nothing to how they’re going to feel when the real life killer who inspired the story pays them a visit.
This is the feature debut of Ginanti Rona Tembang Asri, whose previous credits include 1st assistant director Killers and V/H/S2 and as 2nd unit director on The Raid and The Raid 2.
Midnight Show was a box office hit on its release in Indonesia earlier this year.
Ginanti Rona Tembang Asri and producer/actor Gandhi Fernando will be present for a Q&A after this screening.
10 PM, SATURDAY, 16 APRIL
PEACOCK THEATRE, SALAMANCA ARTS CENTRE
TICKETS $18/$16 OR WITH FEST PASS
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EVOLUTION
France/Belgium/Spain | 2015 | 81 minutes | Dir: Lucile Hadžihalilović | Unclassified, no under 16s unless with an adult
AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
“Put aside everything you know about the birds and the bees. Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Evolution proposes an entirely new paradigm to explain where babies come from, burrowing into young men’s subconscious anxieties about those aspects of their biology that they can and cannot control — including fear of penetration and pregnancy — to create an unsettling companion piece to her 2005 arthouse provocation, Innocence. “—Variety
A stunning work from one of world cinema’s most original filmmakers.
Lucile Hadžihalilović will be available for a Q&A via Skype after this screening.
7 PM, SATURDAY, 16 APRIL
PEACOCK THEATRE, SALAMANCA ARTS CENTRE
TICKETS $18/$16 OR WITH FEST PASS
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Concessions: ADG/MEAA/AWG/TaFA members, Healthcare Card, Seniors Card, under 16s
On the cusp of turning fifteen Greta can’t bear to leave her childhood, it contains all the things that give her comfort in this incomprehensible new world. She floats in a bubble of loserdom with her only friend Elliott, until her parents throw her a surprise 15th birthday party and she’s flung into a parallel place; a world that’s weirdly erotic, a little bit violent and thoroughly ludicrous – only there can she find herself.
Based on the critically acclaimed production by Windmill Theatre, Girl Asleep is a journey into the absurd, scary and beautiful heart of the teenage mind. “It’s in Myers’s commitment to eccentricity that Girl Asleep – an art-house film made firmly with a teenage audience in its sight – finds its heart.” —The Guardian
Rosemary Myers will be available for Q&A via Skype after the screening.
4 PM, SATURDAY, 16 APRIL
PEACOCK THEATRE, SALAMANCA ARTS CENTRE
TICKETS $18/$16 OR WITH FEST PASS
BUY SINGLE TICKET(S)
Concessions: ADG/MEAA/AWG/TaFA members, Healthcare Card, Seniors Card, under 16s
Can body horror be successfully presented on stage? Playwright Alison Mann will discuss how ‘body horror’ films such as David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers (1988) and The Brood (1979) have informed her theatrical worlds.
Her play She’s Not Performing and her new work The Surgeon’s Hands explore psychological traumas, disrupted identities and troubled family relationships through a mixture of physical manifestations and surreal landscapes, where the female protagonists are metaphorically and (almost) literally turned ‘inside-out’.
Alison Mann’s plays have been performed at Edinburgh Fringe, Melbourne Fringe, La Mama and Tasmanian Theatre Company. Her new play The Surgeon’s Hands, produced by Blue Cow Theatre, opens on 21 April at the Backspace Theatre Royal, Hobart.
1 PM, SATURDAY, 16 APRIL
FOUNDERS ROOM, SALAMANCA ARTS CENTRE
TICKETS $4/$6 OR WITH FEST PASS
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Concessions: ADG/MEAA/AWG/TaFA members, Healthcare Card, Seniors Card, under 16s
Mary Shelley Symposium 2016
OLD AGE AND TREACHERY:
Hagsploitation, psychobiddies and the aging woman in horror
Erin Harrington
Horror is obsessed with sexuality and women’s bodies, but while a great deal of attention has been paid to virginal final girls, menstrual werewolves and monstrous pregnancies, the post-menopausal heroines and harridans of horror have generally been overlooked.
This talk looks at older women in horror through the lens of hagsploitation, from psychobiddies Gloria Swanson and Baby Jane, through to more modern iterations such as Deborah Logan and Jessica Lange’s tragic American Horror Story characters. In doing so it explores some of the reasons how and why representations of aging women in horror have been ignored and marginalised. Wicked witches, living deaths and Grande Dame Guignol: granny’s got the good stuff.
Dr Erin Harrington is a lecturer in English at the University of Canterbury (New Zealand) where she teaches cultural studies, theatre and critical sexualities, and she is currently completing a book on women, sex, and reproduction in post-1960s horror film.
12.00 PM, SATURDAY, 16 APRIL
FOUNDERS ROOM, SALAMANCA ARTS CENTRE
TICKETS $4/$6 OR WITH FEST PASS
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Concessions: ADG/MEAA/AWG/TaFA members, Healthcare Card, Seniors Card, under 16s
DOMINIC LENNARD
Domestic dogs regularly earn the affectionate adjective “faithful” in tribute to the numerous ways in which they complement and enrich human lives: as companions, guardians, workmates, friends. However, horror cinema provides multiple instances of dogs turned treacherous, canines who fiercely reject our attribution of fidelity and who abuse the special status we afford them in our culture. With attention to several films, including Suspiria (1977), The Thing (1982), and Cujo (1983), this illustrated presentation takes a stern yet understanding look at these “bad dogs,” considering the terror and allure of imagining the fearsome rebellion of our furry friends.
Dominic Lennard is a writer and academic; he is the author of Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors: The Child Villains of Horror Film (SUNY Press, 2014).
11 AM, SATURDAY, 16 APRIL
FOUNDERS ROOM, SALAMANCA ARTS CENTRE
TICKETS $4/$6 OR WITH FEST PASS
BUY SINGLE TICKET(S)
Concessions: ADG/MEAA/AWG/TaFA members, Healthcare Card, Seniors Card, under 16s
image credit: Cujo, Warner Brothers