Movies
[Fantasia ’12] ‘House Of Psychotic Women’ Book Launch And Screenings
Fantasia International Film Festival is set to kick off later this week in Montreal. While everyone is prepping to dive headfirst into the crazy load of horror films they have this year, Fantasia is also hosting a special book launch event for Kier-La Janisse’s House Of Psychotic Women. The book, published by FAB Press, is described as “An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films”, and it will debut at Fantasia along with the screening of several topical horror films. Check out the official press release below with more details about the book and the screenings.
WRITTEN BY: KIER-LA JANISSE
HARDBACK PRICE: $49.95
PAPERBACK PRICE: $29.95
EXTENT: 360 pages, illustrated in b/w, with a 32-page full colour section
RELEASE: July 22nd
PUBLISHER: FAB Press
Official Book-launch at Fantasia Film Festival, July 22
Since launching with its seminal publication Flesh And Blood (the source of the FAB acronym) in 1993, FAB Press, publishers of books for cult connoisseurs, has gained respect among its loyal customers and knowledgeable members of the book publishing industry alike. The FAB Press logo is your guarantee of quality.
OFFICIAL BOOK-LAUNCH AT FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL, with a screening of FULL CIRCLE (aka The Haunting of Julia) July 22 at 3.15PM @ J.A. De Seve Theatre
Further supporting screenings at Cinematheque Quebecoise as follows:
POSSESSION – July 22 at 8.30PM
CHRISTIANE F. – July 27 at 8.30PM DR.
JEKYLL ET LES FEMMES – July 28 at 6.30PM
“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’, ‘Lord of the Rings’, etc.
Cinema is full of neurotic personalities, but few things are more 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.
HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN is an examination of these characters through a daringly personal autobiographical lens. Anecdotes and memories interweave with film history, criticism, trivia and confrontational imagery to create a reflective personal history and a celebration of female madness, both onscreen and off.
This sharply-designed book is packed with rare stills, posters, pressbooks and artwork that combine with family photos and artifacts to form a titillating sensory overload, with a filmography that traverses the acclaimed and the obscure in equal measure.
“Fascinating, engaging and lucidly written: an extraordinary blend of deeply researched academic analysis and revealing memoir.” – Iain Banks, author of ‘The Wasp Factory’
The Author
Kier-La Janisse is a writer and film programmer who co-founded the Blue Sunshine Psychotronic Film Centre and The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies in Montreal, where she also edits the Fantasia Film Festival’s online magazine, Spectacular Optical. She has been a programmer for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, Texas, founded the CineMuerte Horror Film Festival and the Big Smash! Music-on-Film Festival (both 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!! The Complete Guide to Punk on Film (Fantagraphics, 2010), and is the author of A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi, published by FAB Press in 2007.
Up next from The People’s Joker director Vera Drew is a found footage movie titled Trandemic, and it’s being made possible by the Transgender Film Center Found Footage Feature Fund.
Deadline notes in a report this afternoon that Vera Drew’s Trandemic is the very first recipient of the award, created to “support micro-budget feature filmmaking by transgender creators.”
The outlet explains, “Applications were first evaluated by the Transgender Film Center and partner representatives, with finalists then presented to Duplass Brothers Productions, who selected the winning project.” Vera Drew will receive a $25,000 cash grant to bring Trandemic to life, with the project being described as a “cosmic found footage horror-comedy.”
Deadline further details, “The award package also includes creative advisory support from Duplass Brothers Productions; mentorship with Mark Duplass and Patrick Brice; a final script review from Duplass before production; development guidance from Kevin Nicklaus of Sandstone Artists; 15 days of in-kind post-production services from Aesthetica Post, including conform, color grading, light VFX, DCP delivery and festival-ready masters; a $37,000 post-sound package from Aura Sound and Color; and festival submission waivers from Transgender Film Center and partner festivals, including Fantastic Fest.”
“I’m so wildly stoked and honored to be receiving this grant from the Trans Film Center and Duplass Brothers Productions,” Vera Drew said in a statement. “Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass reinvented the found footage genre with the Creep franchise, so their support means the world to me as I gear up to do the same with my sophomore feature film Trandemic.”
“There were so many incredible projects submitted to us, I wish we could have picked every one of them,” Mark Duplass said. “But here’s the good news … everyone who built their projects to be made at a $25k budget? The hard part is already done. They can now go out, crowdfund it, and bring it to the world at a time when auteur-driven found footage horror is having a real moment.”
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