Join us for a special, spooky screening of The Bloodettes followed by a panel discussion led by Aleah Scott, Picturehouse Audience Development Assistant and Founder of FEELS. and featuring Journalist and Podcaster, Laverne Caprice and Desta Haile, Director of Film Africa.
Together they will be exploring the resurgence of mainstream Black Horror, the particular importance of seeing Black stories represented through the genre and the way in which horror fosters a radical, political and creative platform for marginalised voices.
The night will open up with a short film curated by FEELS.
How can you make a horror film in a place where death is a party?” asks Cameroonian director Jean-Pierre Bekolo in the outrageous and outrageously good sci-fi day-glo zombie political thriller The Bloodettes (Les Saignantes).
Majolie and Chouchou aren’t able to ignore the moral double-talk of the political class. That’s because they’re sex workers, frequented by the elites of a near-future unnamed African state. But when one of their clients dies in flagrant, they must do all they can to reanimate him, dragging his body as a rebuke through a dirty city with a clean surface.
Playing something like an afro-futurist version of Tangerine, or a black feminist take on Thelma & Louise (where the corpse joins the road trip), The Bloodettes is riotous, deeply cool and full of the ambivalence and complexity that can only be expressed by genre. A great introduction to modern African cinema.
To ensure that this event is accessible for Deaf audiences, the films will be subtitled and a BSL interpreter from Sign For All Community will accompany the introduction and discussion.
Screening as part of In Dreams Are Monsters: A Season of Horror Films, a UK-wide film season supported by the National Lottery and BFI Film Audience Network.
