Co-presented by UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Velaslavasay Panorama, the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies and Atlas Obscura
THE KIRLIAN WITNESS (aka THE PLANTS ARE WATCHING, 1979)
Can spider plants sense pain? Is fern telepathy feasible? The empathic, ecophilic Laurie (Nancy Boykin) thinks so, most days eschewing human interactions in favor of quality time with her fiddle-leaf fig tree. After a sudden tragedy, her sister Rilla (Nancy Snyder), a photographer and the film’s narrator, subsumes Laurie’s plant obsession, believing that certain secrets lie within their leaves. Beautifully shot by João Fernandes (Bloodrage, 1980), The Kirlian Witness is a botanical thriller of dendritic proportions, and an essential entry in the tiny but rich horticultural horror canon.
The screening is at 7pm, but enjoy a pre-screening reception in the gardens of the Velaslavasay Panorama from 6pm onwards. Film program begins at 7pm at the Velaslavasay Panorama, 1122 West 24th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007. (www.panoramaonview.org). Tickets $13 ($11 VPES members.)
This class is held in conjunction with several city-wide events celebrating Sacred Bones Records’ re-release of Mort Garson’s classic 1976 electronic concept album, Mother Earth’s Plantasia. Other events in this series include Atlas Obscura’s Plantasia listening party at the UCLA Botanical Gardens on August 10 + 11 (https://www.atlasobscura.com/events/plantasia-at-ucla-botanical-garden-aug-2019) and Kier-La Janisse’s class Murder Season: Crime-Solving Plants and Other Vegetal Horrors at the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies on Thurs. Sept 12.
Kier-La Janisse is a film writer, producer, former programmer, and founder of horror school The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies. She is the author of A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (2007) and House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (2012/2022) and contributed to Recovering 1940s Horror: Traces of a Lost Decade (2014) The Canadian Horror Film: Terror of the Soul (2015), We Are the Martians: The Legacy of Nigel Kneale (2017) and Refocus: The Films of Roberta Findlay (2023). She co-edited (with Paul Corupe) and published (via her imprint Spectacular Optical) the anthology books Kid Power! (2014), Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015), Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin (2017) and Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror on Film and Television (2017). She edited the book Warped & Faded: Weird Wednesday and the Birth of the American Genre Film Archive (2021) and her first film as director/producer, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror was released by Severin Films in 2021.
