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If you want to summon some ghosts, sip on witches’ brew and watch a satanic smorgasbord of documentary, experimental and narrative shorts, head to Glob for Cinema Contra tonight . Film programmer Anthony Buchanan promises that the ghost of Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey will host this unique mix of 16mm and digital prints.
See also: Anthony Buchanan’s Found Footage Frenzy Is Beyond Belief
The lineup is centered on two movies: The fear-mongering Christian propaganda film Revival of Evil attributes the rise of Satanism to everything from rock and roll to drugs, séances and Tarot cards; Equinox is a shabbily made cult horror flick. “It was a prototype for a lot of the 1970s films about teenagers and college kids who go off for a drive for the weekend and encounter a lot of frightening things,” Buchanan says. “It predates Texas Chainsaw Massacre and, perhaps most notably, Evil Dead.”
Buchanan’s programming style is eclectic; shorts allow him to address a variety of issues in a small time frame. “I tried to mix together as many things as I could for this,” he says. “We’ve got documentary, fragments from old, forgotten, classic scary movies and a fair amount of experimental films in there. I’m trying to reach across genres as much as I can.”
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Buchanan is most excited about the avant-garde films haunting the program, many produced by local filmmakers. “Bill Morrison makes films out of decayed, water-damaged films and creates these visual symphonies out of them. In this one he uses old footage from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” he says. “Derek Stuart, who is a grad student at CU, has a film in there where he’s playing around with the emulsion. I think he used Halloween stamps, stamping the ink directly onto the filmstrip.”
Buchanan describes the films of Taylor Dunne and Michelle Silva as “cutesy-type films that use home movies with kids in scary costumes. They become these joyful pieces in and of themselves.”
The program starts at 8:30 p.m. sharp tonight, at Glob, 3551 Brighton Boulevard. There is a $5 suggested donation. For more information, contact Buchanan at antcinema@gmail.com.
Find me on Twitter: @kyle_a_harris
