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MISKATONIC LONDON UNVEILS FALL 2015 LINEUP!

– For Immediate Release –

THE MISKATONIC INSTITUTE OF HORROR STUDIES – LONDON UNVEILS FALL LINEUP
www.www.miskatonicinstitute.com

After a successful pilot season, The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London returns to the Horse Hospital for another semester of intensive film classes on a wide range of arcane topics by some of the horror world’s most renowned critical luminaries.

The BFI’s William Fowler launches the season in September with his lecture on British filmmaker Antony Balch, in association with Scalarama 2015. He will be followed in October by Kier-La Janisse, Gavin Baddeley and David Flint, who will be collectively addressing the Satanic hysteria of the 1980s, based on their new book Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s. In November, visiting lecturer Jim Harper will look at Krimi films, the German Edgar Wallace adaptations of the 1960s. And we’ll be closing the season with a live reading of Nigel Kneale’s lost drama The Road, followed by discussion with Jonathan Rigby, Kim Newman, Stephen Volk and other authors who contributed to the forthcoming book about Nigel Kneale from Spectral Press, We Are the Martians. Course descriptions and instructor bios are available below.

Named for the fictional university in H.P. Lovecraft’s literary mythos, The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies is a non-profit, community-based organization that started in Canada, founded by Kier-La Janisse in March of 2010. Miskatonic London operates under the co-direction of Kier-La Janisse and Virginie Sélavy.

All classes take place at the historic Horse Hospital, the heart of the city’s underground culture. Registration for the full fall semester is £35 (Full semester tickets available HERE).
Individual class tickets are £10 advance / £11 on the door / £8 concessions. See below for the full course descriptions and ticket links.

For further information, images or interview requests, please contact Miskatonic.london@gmail.com

www.www.miskatonicinstitute.com

www.thehorsehospital.com

Info:

The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London
Fall 2015 Semester: monthly classes from September to December 2015
Dates: 10 September, 8 October, 12 November, 10 December
Time: 7-10pm
Venue: Horse Hospital
Address: Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD
Prices: £10 advance / £11 on the door / £8 concs / £35 full semester ticket
(Full semester tickets available HERE).

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FREAKS, HIPPIES AND WITCHES: THE STRANGE, SALACIOUS CINEMA OF ANTONY BALCH
10 September, 2015 – 7-10pm
Instructor: William Fowler

Tickets: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/328787

As part of Scalarama 2015, our first class of the fall semester features William Fowler talking about Antony Balch, an extraordinary figure of 1960s-70s British film, best known for directing Secrets of Sex (1970) and Horror Hospital (1973), and for his collaborations with William Burroughs. As a cinema manager and film distributor, he also released European exploitation films with new unusual titles (e.g. The Weird Weirdo) and secured the first ever UK release of Tod Browning’s Freaks. Selected short films by Antony Balch will be screened as part of the evening.

About the Instructor
WILLIAM FOWLER is a writer, film historian and musician.  He is Curator of Artists’ Moving Image, BFI National Archive and the co-founder and co-programmer of The Flipside at BFI Southbank. His seasons and restoration projects at the BFI have included GAZWRX: the films of Jeff Keen, Queer Pagan Punk: Derek Jarman and This Is Now: Film and Video After Punk, the latter of which is currently touring internationally through LUX.  He has written for The Guardian, Sight and Sound and Frieze and appeared on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, and also contributed chapters to Inside Out: Le Cinéma de Stephen Dwoskin and The Edge is Where the Centre: David Rudkin and Penda’s Fen (which he co-edited). He programmes the monthly BFI strand Essential Experiments and has since 2013 been the co-programmer of Experimenta in the London Film Festival.  He regularly gives talks and presents films.

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SATANIC PANIC: POP-CULTURAL PARANOIA IN THE 1980s
8 October, 2015 – 7-10pm
Instructors: Kier-La Janisse, Gavin Baddeley and David Flint

Tickets: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/329398

In 1980s North America, everywhere you turned there were warnings about a widespread evil conspiracy to indoctrinate the vulnerable through the media they consumed. This percolating cultural hysteria, now known as the “Satanic Panic,” was both illuminated and propagated through almost every pop culture pathway in the 1980s, from heavy metal music to Dungeons & Dragons role playing games, Christian comics, direct-to-VHS scare films, pulp paperbacks, Saturday morning cartoons and TV talk shows —and created its own fascinating cultural legacy of Satan-battling VHS tapes, music and literature. As the hysteria moved overseas to the UK, Australia and South Africa, its life extended into the 1990s – and some say it never went away. From con artists to pranksters and moralists to martyrs, this lecture – based on the instructors’ book of the same name, which will be available at the screening – aims to capture the untold story of the how the Satanic Panic was fought on the pop culture frontlines and the serious consequences it had for many involved.

About the Instructors
KIER-LA JANISSE is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of Spectacular Optical Publications, founder of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies and author of the books House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films and A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi, as well as co-editor of Spectacular Optical’s first book, Kid Power!

GAVIN BADDELEY is an English writer specialising in the devilish and decadent, with a special interest in the darker fringes of history. He’s penned ten books and written for numerous periodicals. An honorary priest in the Church of Satan, Baddeley’s in demand as a speaker in both academic and media circles.

DAVID FLINT is a freelance writer, sometime filmmaker and full time angry misanthrope who has edited Sheer Filth, Divinity and Headpress, authored Babylon Blue, Ten Years of Terror and Zombie Holocaust and written for publications ranging from Rapid Eye, Bizarre and Skin Two to Penthouse, Loaded and Mayfair.

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SHADOWS AND FOG: THE FORGOTTEN HISTORY OF THE GERMAN EDGAR WALLACE KRIMI
12 November, 2015- 7-10pm
Instructor: Jim Harper

Tickets: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/329400

Between 1959 and the early 1970s, German film companies released more than fifty low-budget crime thrillers inspired by the works of British writer Edgar Wallace. Featuring some of Europe’s most well-known cult and horror actors (including Christopher Lee, Klaus Kinski and Gert Fröbe) the Edgar Wallace krimi combined fast-paced action, surprising violence and zany humour. Sold en masse to US television and shown in an edited and badly dubbed form, these films have rarely received the attention they deserve. Jim Harper explores the background and history of the Wallace krimi, from their beginnings to their long-term influence in Germany and beyond, discussing the charm and appeal of these quintessential European cult favourites.

About the Instructor
JIM HARPER is a writer and film critic specializing in cult cinema from around the globe. He is the author of Legacy of Blood: A Comprehensive Guide to Slasher Movies (Headpress, 2004) and Flowers from Hell: The Modern Japanese Horror Film (Noir, 2008). His work has appeared in many publications and websites, including Midnight Eye, MYM, Electric Sheep, Necronomicon, V-Cinema, Deranged, Alternative and Scream, and he has contributed to Intellect’s ground-breaking Directory of World Cinema series, writing for the Spanish and Japanese volumes. Currently Harper is working on a revised and updated edition of Flowers from Hell, and preparing the first English-language book about the German Edgar Wallace films of the 1960s.

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LIVE FROM MISKATONIC: NIGEL KNEALE’S ‘THE ROAD’
10 December, 2015 – 7-10pm
Instructors: Stephen Volk, Jonathan Rigby, Kim Newman, Neil Snowdon

Tickets: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/329402

In 1950 Thomas Nigel Kneale won the Somerset Maugham Award for his prose collection TOMATO CAIN & OTHER STORIES.

In 1953 he changed the face of British Television with THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT. Public houses across the country emptied as each installment of this thrilling new story went out live to the nation. Never before had a television drama become a national event, and few enough have had such an impact since.

His adaptation of NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR would raise questions in Parliament, such was its power, while original dramas like THE YEAR OF THE SEX OLYMPICS accurately predicted, and indicted, the sensationalism of ‘Reality TV’ and the passivity of the society that produced it.

In the years that followed QUATERMASS & THE PIT, THE STONE TAPE, MURRAIN, BEASTS, THE WOMAN IN BLACK and more, would influence successive generations of authors, film makers and screenwriters. From Russell T. Davies to The League Of Gentlemen, John Carpenter to Stephen King, Chris Carter, Peter Strickland, Ramsey Campbell, China Mieville and more…

Jacques Derrida may have coined the term, but it is Kneale – in his style, themes, and the unique tone of his work – who provides a touchstone for the Hauntological movement which has pervaded our culture in recent years.

To mark the launch of WE ARE THE MARTIANS, a new book of essays about Kneale and his work from Spectral Press, The Miskatonic Institute presents a unique celebration of the work of Nigel Kneale.

A rehearsed reading of Kneale’s lost drama THE ROAD (featuring Jonathan Rigby and others), will be followed by an in depth discussion of Kneale’s work and influence by some of the book’s authors, including screenwriter Stephen Volk (GHOST WATCH, AFTERLIFE, THE AWAKENING), author and critic Kim Newman (ANNO DRACULA, NIGHTMARE MOVIES), editor Neil Snowdon and others to be confirmed.

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