A newsletter from the shed of
Now then Losers' Club,
How's your week been? Are you surviving January? Our newsletter this week is all about two big annnouncements.
First, I am very happy to tell you that Knit One, Stab Two is playing at a number of festivals over the next few months, and I am pretty sure you're going to be able to watch Knit One via at least one of them.
The European premiere is taking place on Thursday 2nd February at City Kino Wedding in Berlin, at the Final Girls Berlin Film Festival. It's also going to be playing online on vimeo on demand (and not geo-locked) so you can access from anywhere in the world.
This means you can support a brilliant film festival which in turn supports women and non-binary filmmakers and watch loads of old ladies stabbing people to death with knitting needles in my film, huzzah.
Knit One... is then playing at cinema L'épée de bois, rue Mouffetard in Paris, in person, at the Kill Valentine Film Festival on February 11th, before heading over to the States for its North American premiere at the Strand Theatre in Marietta, Georgia for the Renegade Film Festival, in March.
A few days after Renegade, we have the South Asian premiere when it plays India, at Harkat Studios in Mumbai for the Wench Film Festival. Like Final Girls Berlin, Wench is also hybrid, and you will be able to screen all their films and events online - so sign up to their online ticket notification service - it looks like it is going to be a super interesting event.
There are more selections coming up but I'm not allowed to announce them yet. Even if you are not interested in Knit One..., do consider checking out these film festivals - all dedicated to horror and / or women filmmakers, and well worth supporting (on this note, also have a gander at Etheria, Ax Wound and Sick Chicks Flicks).
Now, to my other news.
Here we go.
This is going to be my last newsletter for a while - hence the subject title of this missive.
I've been writing this newsletter since December 2020 and have absolutely loved it. But, at the same time, I've mostly, on-and-off, been on research leave (thanks to my workplace and the AHRC) for various grant projects.
This leave has given me a bit more space and time to write this newsletter, but it is all change from February.
From next month, I am going back to work at the University of Leeds as an Associate Professor of Film, and reprise my role as Deputy Director for Research and Innovation. I've also got a few more months of work before I get the Doing Women's (Global) (Horror) Film History project over the finish line, and I need to dedicate as much time as I can this year to working on my next book, Her Chainsaw Heart (and not to even mention impending revisions on another book manuscript I've done, and various articles that are under peer review argh).
So, over the last few weeks, I've realised it might be a really good idea not to completely work myself into the ground during 2023. And to make sure I don't completely crumble, I need to not only start saying no to things, but also cut back on other commitments.
Which, for now, includes regularly writing the newsletter.
I hope this is OK?
I am still going to write to you all, the Losers' Club will continue, but it won't be every fortnight, it will be when I have something to tell you, more sporadic, more as and when.
We'll see how that goes.
Finally, as a little parting gift for now, I've included - for the first time ever - the true answer to a question I get asked a lot in interviews:
what is your favourite horror film?
I usually fudge and prevaricate, throw out a few choices
(which are invariably true and include Island of Lost Souls, The Lost Boys, Carnival of Souls, Night of the Eagle, The Shining, The Seventh Victim)
but the truth, my absolute number one, is displayed in the image at the top of this email:
Night of the Demon (1957).
It's all seances and curses, suburbia and runes, Stonehenge and trains. And with the added bonus of being referenced in Kate Bush's 'Hounds of Love'.
What more do you want from a horror film?
ta ta for now,
Alison
The Losers' Club is a newsletter by Alison Peirse, associate professor of film and
author / editor of Women Make Horror; After Dracula and Korean Horror Cinema.