Friday Oct 14 – 6:00pm
Philosophical Research Society
3910 Los Feliz Blvd
Los Angeles, CA
Tickets $15 available here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/woodlands-dark-and-days-bewitched-with-director-kier-la-janisse-in-person-tickets-410192064507

WOODLANDS DARK AND DAYS BEWITCHED (2021, Severin Films, 194 min.) is the first feature-length documentary on the history of folk horror, exploring the phenomenon from its beginnings in a trilogy of films – Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General (1968), Piers Haggard’s Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973) – through its proliferation on British television in the 1970s and its culturally specific manifestations in American, Asian, Australian and European horror, to the genre’s revival over the last decade.

The film is produced and directed by Kier-La Janisse for Severin Films, with David Gregory and Carl Daft as Executive Producers.  While exploring the key cinematic signposts of folk horror – touching on over 200 films, television plays and episodes as well as early inspirational literature – the film also examines the rise of paganism in the late 1960s, the prominence of the witch-figure in connection with second wave feminism, the ecological movement of the 1970s, the genre’s emphasis on landscape and psychogeography, and American manifestations of folk horror from Mariners’ tales and early colonial history to Southern Gothic and backwoods horror.

Finally, the film navigates through the muddy politics of folk nostalgia. The term ‘folk horror’ is a loaded one, and WOODLANDS DARK AND DAYS BEWITCHED explores the many ways that we alternately celebrate, conceal and manipulate our own histories in an attempt to find spiritual resonance in our surroundings.

Director & producer Kier-La Janisse will introduce the screening and appear for Q&A after. She will be selling copies of the blu ray as well as the 20-disc set All The Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror.

Please note start time of 6:00 PM and 3 hr. 14 min. running time of the documentary.

This is an in-person event only. Please email events@prs.org if you have any questions.