BRATTLEBORO-Epsilon Spires presents the Folk Horror From the British Isles Film Festival in its vaulted sanctuary space on 190 Main St. on Sunday, Aug. 11, and Fridays, Aug. 16 and 23.
Each evening pairs a live musical performance with a classic cult film for "an electrifying experience that will transport the audience to faraway lands with mystical happenings," say organizers in a news release. "These films are beautiful and unique - they are not traditional 'horror,' but more eerie metaphysical contemplations on the power of nature, folklore, and the supernatural realm."
Aug. 11's screening will be Penda's Fen, the subversive BBC masterpiece from 1974. Set in the pastoral landscape of Worcestershire, England, the television play is a coming-of-age story of a vicar's son whose encounters with angels, composer Edward Elgar, and pagan King Penda evoke a reckoning between England's present culture and its pagan past.
The cult status of Penda's Fen "is no doubt due to its potent mix of mysticism, music, landscape, and a young man's liberating search for identity," organizers say. The evening will begin with a live music performance inspired by the film by "Appalachian shapeshifters" Magic Tuber Stringband, a duo from North Carolina that Mojo has called "a band alive to the experimental possibilities of American roots music."
The most notorious Brit-folk-horror classic, The Wicker Man (1973), screens on Aug. 16 in a Final Cut 4K restoration in honor of the film's 50th anniversary.
A conspiracy-thriller set during the colorful festivities of May Day, the film builds to "one of the most terrifying and iconic climaxes in modern cinema," organizers say. A police sergeant searches for a missing girl on a remote Scottish Island, where Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee) and his devoted followers worship only the pagan gods of old.
Opening the evening is a live performance of music from the soundtrack of The Wicker Man performed by Beverly Ketch, a singer known for her work with Stella Kola, accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Pisani.
On Aug. 23, the series ends with a screening of Enys Men (2022), a beguiling 16 mm meditation on memory and place. Set on Cornwall's coast in the days before May Day, 1973, an unnamed volunteer is stationed alone on an island, where supplies are dwindling and radio messages are fragmented and cryptic. She only holds a copy of A Blueprint for Survival, an environmentalist text whose cover is emblazoned with the promise that, after reading it, "nothing quite seems the same any more."
Before the film, there will be an immersive ambient music performance by Neonach, a solo project by Craig Douglas of The Empyreans.
All three films will take place in Epsilon Spires' sanctuary, with its historic Estey organ. Refreshments will be available, alongside the opening acts, which will begin at 8 p.m. Tickets are available on a sliding scale, $10–20. Visit epsilonspires.org for details and to purchase tickets.
This Arts item was submitted to The Commons.