Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 183: Sat Jul 2

Dead of Night: Exorcism (Taylor, 1972) & Road (Clarke, 1987):
Masonic Temple, Andaz Hotel, 40 Liverpool Street, EC2M 7QN

A brilliant British TV double-header from Josh Saco at the Cigarette Burns Film Club.

Here is his introduction to the event which is part of the East End Film Festival:

Cinema explores the world we inhabit; it’s able to look at the world and highlight ills—past and present— and set up the various possibilities of our future. With The Warning we package these stories into one large narrative, starting with a voice from the past, following through unease, unrest and the inevitable resistance. Sadly this tale takes a dark turn where warnings were ignored and we end up in the seemingly inevitable dystopian future, where the struggles, though different, have continued headlong towards collapse.

The Warning weaves it’s way through Freemasonry’s historical connections to the crafts folk and guilds and their own grand aims of unification and fraternity, while being conspiratorially viewed as a secretive organisation for world domination. What could possibly go wrong? —Josh Saco, Masonic Temple programmer

Dead of Night: Exorcism
Dir: Don Taylor | UK | 1972 | 50 min
At a Christmas dinner in an old cottage, there’s a sudden power failure and the phone goes dead, the wine turns to blood and the turkey makes them violently sick. Then things really get strange…

Road
Dir: Alan Clarke | UK | 1990 | 62 min
A bleak portrait of life in a Lancashire town in 1980’s Thatcher era Britain.

Here (and above) is the opening to Dead of Night: The Exorcism.