A look at the life of M. R. James
At the height of the summer tourist season, the Spanish beach town Magaluf turns into a hellscape of the low-cost travel industry. For eight weeks every year, over one million mostly British vacationers ride an alcohol-soaked tide of public urination, fisticuffs and ambulance sirens for recreation. Instead of assembling a clip-reel of "balconing," when drunk idiots jump into hotel pools from their balconies, filmmaker Miguel Ángel Blanca crafts a far deeper and atmospheric look at a place where visitors and locals alike are driven by pleasure. Long-time resident Maria has little time left, so she takes in a seasonal lodger who listens to her relive her glory days. An enterprising real estate agent peddles an extravagant development, while a young gay man drifts without any plans beyond robbing a tourist for kicks. Part ghost story, part foreboding parable, this is a stylish and vivid impression of people and a place dreaming of escape. Myrocia Watamaniuk (Hot Docs)
An animated documentary chronicling famed paranormal investigator Harry Price’s research at Borley Rectory, renowned as the ‘most haunted house in England’.
X-ray images were invented in 1895, the same year in which the Lumière brothers presented their respective invention in what today is considered to be the first cinema screening. Thus, both cinema and radiography fall within the scopic regime inaugurated by modernity. The use of X-rays on two sculptures from the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum generates images that reveal certain elements of them that would otherwise be invisible to our eyes. These images, despite being generally created for technical or scientific purposes, seem to produce a certain form of 'photogénie': they lend the radiographed objects a new appearance that lies somewhere between the material and the ethereal, endowing them with a vaporous and spectral quality. It is not by chance that physics and phantasmagoria share the term 'spectrum' in their vocabulary.
Since ancient times, the Green Man has been one of the most mysterious and menacing of mythical characters. He also has a familiar face as Robin Hood , Jack in the Green and on numerous pub signs. Across the arts from comic strips to classical opera, the Green Man is now making a comeback. Where is he taking us? Writer Sir Kingsley Amis , film director John Boorman , composer Sir Harrison Birtwistle and other leading artists offer their interpretations of the mystery in this Omnibus documentary film from 16th November, 1990.
Their whole life they've experienced paranormal activity. What is the source of the haunts that plague their lives? Is it fabrication or is it something much more sinister? Explore the wild encounters that make their life HELL.
Everybody loves a ghost story and East Anglia is rich in tales of the supernatural. In centuries past, East Anglia was cut off from the rest of England and with its wild coastline and lovely countryside this landscape has inspired tales of mystery and the macabre. There are hundreds of ghost stories about East Anglia, told by one generation to the next but perhaps becoming a little embroidered along the way. But in the twentieth century ghosts became the subject of film and television. People's experiences of the supernatural were recorded and television crews actively investigated hauntings. We have searched the vaults of the East Anglian Film Archive to bring you some of the most chilling ghost stories of our region. To the best of our knowledge all of the stories you are about to see... are true. Including: a haunted police station in Suffolk, the ghost of Peterhouse College, Cambridge, Old Shuck of Norfolk, Borley Rectory and the disturbed burial mound in Northamptonshire
Jamie returns to his hometown in search of answers to his wife's murder, which occurred after receiving a weird package containing a ventriloquist dummy named Billy, which may be linked to the legend of ventriloquist Mary Shaw. Destined to find out the truth, Jamie goes to the town of Raven's Fair, where Shaw used to perform and is buried. But Jamie is in for more than he expected.
Five friends play a game in a "mysterious" forest with a long history as a beacon for troubled young people contemplating suicide.
Rory thinks there's a ghost haunting his shower and decides to investigate its origin. But when he goes to a party and meets a romantic interest, his spectral mystery begins to unravel.
A young squire accused of murdering a young girl that did not return his feelings of love reveals a supernatural secret at his trial.
Inside a long-abandoned mine lurks a dark being which haunts the descendants of the miners who trapped it. When Luke's niece is suddenly struck with a strange form of schizophrenia, he re-opens the mine in hopes of raising the money to get her better treatment. But in order to truly save her, he must face the family curse.
Laura, 25, is an actress in a L.A.R.P. (Live Action Role Playing) Game, where the participants play the survivors of an atomic war who live underground in a sealed bunker. After several mysterious accidents, the game is interrupted and the players leave the bunker while the staff remain behind to investigate the disappearance of Greg, the mastermind of the game. They soon find themselves trapped inside and in peril as they begin to die in mysterious ways and the group realizes that someone or something paranormal is playing a twisted game with them which quickly plunges into a terrifying fight for survival.
When David King purchases a house in the hills far above the angst of Los Angeles, he gets much more than he bargained for when strange and unexplainable occurrences in and around the house begin to take control of his daily life
A young governess for two children becomes convinced that the house and grounds are haunted by ghosts and that the children are being possessed.
1840 and another ship crashes on the rocks of an almost deserted island in Scotland. Three sailors survive the wreck and make it to shore where the few locals take them in as they wait for the mainland boat to come for them. But the sailors' survival story has only just started as they uncover the strange past of the once vibrant island.
Miser Ebenezer Scrooge is awakened on Christmas Eve by spirits who reveal to him his own miserable existence, what opportunities he wasted in his youth, his current cruelties, and the dire fate that awaits him if he does not change his ways. Scrooge is faced with his own story of growing bitterness and meanness, and must decide what his own future will hold: death or redemption.