Celluloid Screeeeeeaaaams!!!!!!!
Showroom Cinemas, Sheffield.
21 Sep 2010 by Sarah
It's a cold, almost wintery night in mid to late September, and the vast amounts of people coming to witness Showroom Cinema's feature night showcasing the very best of last year's "Celuloid Screams" festival, quite clearly indicate a truly successful night. And Debased is not about to argue with that. For not only are we about to witness more frightening films than the whole of the hammer house AND its garden chain, we are also spoilt with the first showing of the trailer for this year's festival!
Last year's winner of Celluloid Screams 2009 Audience Award for “Best Short Film”, at only five minutes long, was Andy Muschietti's Spanish film, “Mama”. (Film Still below courtesy of www.slashfilm.com/2009/05/05/guillermo-del-toro-mentoring-muschiettis-mama/).
Muschietti employs wonderfully eerie cinematography from the off, with the white chalk scrawling the word “mama” on a blackboard, seemingly of its own accord. The premise is both beautifully simple, and physically intense, as we follow the tale of two young children, Victoria and Lily. Apparently alone in a grand Gothic house, there is a ghoul who will not let them sleep. Yet, the spirit in question is their one source of refuge. The person they can turn to when they graze their knee when skidding in the rain, when their nightmares prove too much for their fragile, ever developing minds: their mother. Haunted by the spirit of the woman who gave them life, they are children in need of a desperate escape. And all would be well, except somewhere along the line, one of these pretty dainty creatures undergoes a transformation guaranteed to shock and terrify...
With an English feature length film planned for the coming years, the future looks certain to chill us to the bone......
My personal favourite however, was Richard Bates' film, Excision. (Film Still below courtesy of http://vimeo.com/excision)
Not a film for the faint at heart, or those with a low gore threshold, this is just under twenty minutes of pure and inescapable blood thirst. Shot in near Kubrick style simplicity so the focus is entirely on the gruesome action, Bates delivers a blistering and intense story of a young girl's obsession with medical procedures and the lengths she will go to for those she loves...
Tickets for this year's Celluloid Screams festival are on sale now at
www.showroomworkstation.org.uk/