Miskatonic-Montréal kicks off its Fall 2016 semester on Tuesday, 27 September, 7-10pm, with the six-week course, “Women Horror Directors.” Week one features a screening and discussion of the Soska Sisters’ AMERICAN MARY, followed by THE HITCH-HIKER, directed by Ida Lupino, a pioneering woman director working in Hollywood (4 October). Week three of the course treats us to Amy Holden Jones’s feminist slasher film, SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE (pictured), written by novelist Rita Mae Brown (11 October). Next up is Kathryn Bigelow’s cult favourite, NEAR DARK (18 October), followed by Iranian-American director Ana Lily Amirpour’s acclaimed independent horror film, A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT (25 October). Our final week of the course features a screening, Q&A and discussion with Montréal filmmaker Maude Michaud about her work, which includes the feature film, DYS–, and the short film, SNUFF (1 November).
Alanna Thain teaches cultural studies and world cinemas, and also directs the Moving Image Research Laboratory (mirl.lab.mcgill.ca) at McGill University, where at least part of HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME (1981) was filmed (most of the film was filmed at Concordia University). She would like to confirm that she is still recovering from watching that film while unsupervised at a very young age, and is still waiting to be able to watch it again. Her horror specialty is the work of David Lynch. She also runs a bike powered mobile cinema project, Cinema out of the Box, and collaborated with the Volatile Den for a cemetery screening last summer (https://www.facebook.com/mobilecinemamontreal).
