B-to-Z double bill at Cinematek | Offscreen
Every last Friday of the month, we collaborate with the Cinematek's B-to-Z rendez-vous in Brussels, a moment in the history of alternative cinema that shouldn't be missed. Unearthed from the dark recesses of the archive: hilarious B-movies, blood-chilling thrillers, Gialli, slashers and other exploitation cinema gems… Take advantage of the 2-for-1: two films with a common theme for the price of a single ticket.
30 November 2018
Witchcraft is a thankful theme when it comes to scaring audiences. From Benjamin Christensen’s silent film classic “Häxan” and the Wicked Witch of the West from “The Wizard of Oz”, over disconcerting films about pagan rituals, inquisition, and witch burning...
26 October 2018
Alien invasion is perhaps one of the most common storylines in science-fiction films. The appeal is simple: even though we would like to know if extraterrestrials (intelligent or not) exist, we also wonder what would happen if they found us first and whether or not...
28 September 2018
We prolong the holiday theme of the previous two B-to-Z editions with a new destination. After Saint-Tropez and Hong Kong, we are now heading to the meadowy regions of the Alps. Tyrolean sex films were a phenomenon in the 1970s when soft-erotic pictures from...
31 August 2018
B-movie cinema is infamous for its copying of successful movies: the champion imitators were the Italians and the Turks, and tonight… the Hongkongers! The films we will be presenting have little in common with the ‘cheap’ Mediterranean productions but carry the stamp...
27 July 2018
The Côte d’Azur is one of the favorite summer destinations of the Belgians – but many B-to-Z films are taking place there, too. Saint-Tropez inspired both pornographers as well as numerous – hilarious- comedies. Apart from the “Gendarmes” movies and “Les sous-doués”,...
29 June 2018
The slasher isn’t exactly a romantic genre because the body count is its main concern. However, romance plays a certain role in this months from B to Z selection. "My Bloody Valentine" is one of the great classics from the Golden Age of the American slasher. Following...
25 May 2018
Following the success of the first James Bond movie in the early 1960s, many small Italian, Spanish, French and English productions imitated the famous British agent, hoping to rake in as much money as the Sean Connery super productions. The Euro-spies were born. In...
27 April 2018
From peplum to slasher, over the martial arts films from the Shaw Brothers: there's a homosexual undertone in many camp films. At the time of release, the public didn't notice anything, but the hidden meanings became clearer over time as the morals evolved. This is...
30 March 2018
Forget Ash's possessed hand in “Evil Dead II” or Thing T. Thing, the helpful hand from “The Addams Family”. The hands stealing the show in this B to Z are another breed of five-fingered beast entirely. “Demonoid” AKA “Macabra” starts off in a small town in Mexico,...
23 February 2018
The sequel to "Candyman" leaves the urban setting of the first movie. This time, the story takes place in New Orleans in the 1990s: the son of a slave who was killed in the 19th century returns to haunt and kill people. Bill Condon ("Gods and Monsters") gives depth to...
26 January 2018
In March 2017, Cuban-born actor Tomas Milian passed away age 84. He had more than one hundred films to his name but became famous thanks to the Italian genre films of the 1960s and 1970s. Tomas Milian's breakthrough came when he started to play the villain in the so-...
29 December 2017
The 1980s saw an influx of Sword & Sorcery movies in the wake of the success of Conan the Barbarian, a film adaptation of the fantasy adventures of the 1930s pulp-fiction author Robert E. Howard. The role of the muscular brute Conan, a Nietzschean superman who...
24 November 2017
"Game of Death" is a unique case: it is the last film of Bruce Lee, who died when the film was still in production. The film being unfinished, the story was changed: a famous karate movie star has to fake his death in order to exact revenge on a gang of criminals out...
27 October 2017
Released in 1987, the first “Predator “was a big surprise: persuaded to find Schwarzenegger in a war movie following the success of “Commando”, the public discovers a Horror Sci-Fi film full of gore ... and a promising young director: John McTiernan , future king of...
29 September 2017
The American director George A. Romero left the world of the living on 16 June. This B-Z is a posthumous tribute to the godfather of the modern zombie movie. Thanks to Romero, the zombie, a previously somewhat marginal figure from the horror pantheon, became a...