The Final Girls Present: She’s Right Behind You
Vengeful female ghosts are a staple in folklore, horror fiction and cinema. Disembodied and freed from the patriarchal grasp and domination of the female body, they are empowered to avenge those who wronged them when they were alive. The Lady in White, The Slit-Mouthed Woman, La Llorona, Bloody Mary… they’re all versions of the same figure. Feminist horror film collective The Final Girls take over the Masonic Temple to explore this recurring ghostly figure.
April 21
12.30PM
The Uninvited (1944)
Lewis Allen | 99min | USA
While holidaying in Cornwall, American composer Rick Fitzgerald (Ray Milland) and his sister Pamela (Ruth Hussey) fall in love and buy an abandoned 18th-century manor, Windward House. Very soon after moving in, strange occurrences start happening and the siblings must confront the house’s history. One of the first film to take ghostly apparitions and possession seriously, this American chiller remains seriously creepy.
The screening will be followed by a panel discussion where The Final Girls will dive into what are the cinematic archetypes for female ghosts, and their hidden feminist power.
4.00PM
Kuroneko (1968)
Kaneto Shindo | 99min | Japan
This cinematic retelling of the venerable Japanese folktale A Cat’s Revenge is set in the 12th century. After Yone (Nobuko Otowa) and her daughter-in-law Shige (Kiwako Taichi) are raped and killed by renegade samurai warriors, they come back to life as ghosts to seek revenge on them and all samurais.
April 22
1PM
The Others (2001)
Alejándro Amenábar | 100min | Spain
At the tail end of WW2, Grace (Nicole Kidman) and her two children retire to a mansion on Jersey, where they wait for her husband to return from war. Eager to shield her photosensitive children from the outside world, Grace runs the house with strict and strange rules, which will be broken when she hires a group of servants for them and her daughter Anne starts claiming she is seeing ghosts.
3PM
Whispering Corridors (1998)
Park Ki-hyung | 105min | South Korea
A teacher in an an all-female high school, Mrs. Park (Yong-nyeo Lee) discovers that her former student Jin-ju is “definitely dead, but still attending school”. The next day, she is found brutally murdered by three students, who must deal with a sadistic teacher, teenage bullying and a violent ghost.
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