Tonight as part of their ambitious month-long Nightmare City festival, Cinefamily presents a perfectly paired double bill:

THE SHOUT – 8:00pm

A gonzo gothic fantasy played straight, The Shout showcases Alan Bates as an unspeakably chilling dark stranger who emerges from the dunes of a sleepy English seaside village, to wreak havoc on an avant-garde composer of musique concrète (John Hurt) and his wife (Susannah York). Insinuating himself as an unwanted houseguest, Bates regales his hosts with tales the “terror shout,” his ability to shriek so penetratingly that any creature within earshot will be struck dead. As Hurt cannot resist this sonic novelty, and as York develops an irresistible desire for the lurking sorcerer, the narrative in impossible directions, while also finding time for extended synth montages, inexplicable role reversals, wild symbology, frame stories within flashbacks, and at least one false ending!
Dir. Jerzy Skolimowski, 1978, 35mm, 86 min.

JACOB KIRKEGAARD PERFORMS “LABYRINTHITIS” AND “THE VISITOR” (WORLD PREMIERE!) – 10:00pm
There is no better sonic pairing for The Shout than world-renowned Danish soundmaker Jacob Kirkegaard, who tonight brings us two astounding performances focusing on the reactivity of acoustic spaces, and phenomena usually imperceptible to the ear. Past “instruments” have included a geyser, a sand dune and the abandoned rooms of Chernobyl, but tonight, Jacob harnesses sounds from both the Silent Movie Theatre itself, and from our own inner ears! First is the impossibly cool LABYRINTHITIS, in which Jacob collects the frequencies resonating within his own ear canals, then processes and orchestrates them to tweak frequencies within the audience’s own eardrums.

Then, it’s the world premiere of THE VISITOR, commissioned exclusively for Nightmare City. With inspiration from Alvin Lucier’s pioneering “I Am Sitting in a Room”, Jacob will record the seemingly silent auditorium, play it back, record that, play that back, and so on. This looping condenses the aural space until it reverberates in a sonic invocation, making the Silent Movie Theatre (and perhaps the spirits of its “storied” past) speak to the audience in its own resonant tones. THIS IS SOME AMAZING STUFF!

Tomorrow night Cinefamiy presents The Hands of Orlac, the haunting 1924 silent German Expressionist horror classic directed by Robert Wiene (of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari fame) with a live score by prepared piano maestro Hauschka.

And on October 28th, they’ve got a special event planned with composer Claudio Simonetti (the original keyboardist of Goblin) including a dinner, Q&A and a screening of Dario Argento’s Tenebrae struck from one of the world’s few remaining fully-uncut 35mm prints. More information at Cinefamily’s website.

Buy tickets here. Nightmare City is co-presented by The Woodshed Horror Company and Cinespia.