Film series: Dark arts 6 November 2019 – 2 February 2020

Imagine this film series as a procession of fantastic beings. Witches join folk creatures, ghouls and a magical Czech cat in a global survey of supernatural cinema. From ’70s French new wave comedy to Italian magic neorealism and Thai avant-pop, Dark arts brings together 12 tales of the wondrous and macabre, screening at the Art Gallery from 6 November 2019 to 2 February 2020 in association with the exhibition Japan supernatural.

Cinema is a ghostly medium. Early filmmakers delighted in double exposures, dissolves and trick effects to summon unseen worlds. In 1896, Maxim Gorky described the Lumière brothers’ films as a kingdom of shadows, where ‘the grey silhouettes of the people, as though condemned to eternal silence and cruelly punished by being deprived of all the colours of life, glide noiselessly along the grey ground’. There are spectres in this season, yet many run riot in Technicolor.

This is phantasmagoric cinema. Our opening week double bill – Dario Argento’s Suspiria and Jacques Rivette’s Céline and Julie go boating – invites viewers down the rabbit hole into otherworldly realms conjured by witchcraft (and skilful cinematographers).

This is cinema that quickens the pulse. The season continues with a selection of psychological thrillers in which supernatural explanations help characters make sense of inexplicable events. In Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t look now, a grieving couple experience premonitions amidst the labyrinthine canals of Venice.

This is cinema that bends time. Ancestral spirits and the living co-exist in Julie Dash’s landmark of African-American storytelling, Daughters of the dust, while the titular character of Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy as Lazzaro falls headfirst into present-day Italy.

This is a cinema of play, where masks and musical instruments possess a life force. Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Palme d’Or-winning Uncle Boonmee populates a bedside farewell with shapeshifting creatures inspired by the eerie aesthetics of low-budget Thai film.

This is cinema celebrating its own dark arts.

Films

• 6 November – Suspiria (director Dario Argento, Italy, 1977, 35mm)

• 10 November – Céline and Julie go boating (director Jacques Rivette, France, 1974, 35mm-to-digital)

• 13 November – Carnival of souls (director Herk Harvey, US, 1962, 16mm)

• 20, 24 November – Séance on a wet afternoon (director Bryan Forbes, UK, 1964, 35mm)

• 27 November, 1 December – Celia (director Ann Turner, Australia, 1989, 35mm)

• 4, 8 December – Happy as Lazzaro (director Alice Rohrwacher, Italy, 2018, Digital)

• 11, 15 December – When the cat comes (director Vojtěch Jasný, Czech Republic, 1963, 35mm-to-digital)

• 8, 12 January – Don’t look now (director Nicolas Roeg, UK, 1973, 35mm)

• 15, 19 January – Daughters of the dust (director Julie Dash, US, 1991, 35mm-to-digital) 

• 22, 16 January – BeDevil (director Tracey Moffatt, Australia, 1993, 35mm)

• 29 January, 2 February – Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives (director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand, 2010, 35mm)