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.
29 November 2019
As part of Cinematek’s Restored! programme, we present to you two giallo masterpieces made by two maestri: Dario Argento’s Opera and Lucio Fulci’s "Non si sevizia un paperino"."Opera" is a late giallo from the end of the 1980s and the first Dario Argento movie to be...
25 October 2019
The buddy cop film – you know, that subgenre in which two cops with clashing characters have to work together – was at its most popular in the 1980s with films such as "Lethal Weapon" and "48 Hrs". In this month’s B to Z, we present to you two examples of the...
27 September 2019
Wanting to cash in on the success of "Emanuelle" (1974) – featuring Sylvia Kristel on a sexual adventure in Bangkok – producers of softcore films couldn’t get enough of exotic locations. Even in Germany, where the bavarian sex movie was starting to lose momentum, it...
30 August 2019
Last year, we had to say goodbye to one of the best action movie directors from Hong Kong: Ringo Lam. He acquired international fame thanks to “City on Fire”, the movie that inspired Tarantino's “Reservoir Dogs”. Like with many other Hong Kong directors (such as John...
26 July 2019
Walter Hill is no stranger to lovers of cult cinema. At the beginning of his career, he wrote Peckinpah's “The Getaway” and produced the “Alien” franchise with his brand-new production company Brandywine Productions. Most of all though, Hill is the director of a series...
28 June 2019
Cemeteries are the bread and butter for horror fans. The creepier the better, with bonus points for nightly and misty settings. Things get even cozier when the inhabitants of these final resting places wake up to crawl their way up to the surface.“Pet Sematary” proves...
31 May 2019
Two heist films built around the legendary stunt man Rémy Julienne...In the late 1960s, "The Italian Job" launched Julienne's career, thanks to the famous chase scenes filmed in mini Coopers. It became a British cult hit in the following years, with not only a remake...
26 April 2019
Many historians have tried to unravel the mysterious origins of one of the most flamboyant Italian genres: the giallo film. Mario Bava and Dario Argento are the founding fathers of this genre in which gloved murderers turn killing into an art form. Some say its origins...
29 March 2019
Every last Friday of the month in Cinematek, Offscreen presents a double-bill of genre films, exploitation, B-movies and cult cinema on vintage 35mm, sourced from the Belgian film archives. This month's B-Z is inspired by the "Game On!" module.A few decades ago no-one...
22 February 2019
After the testosterone-filled programme of January, it's time for some female-friendly horror with two ferocious cannibal movies directed by women. In 2002, Marina De Van, an actress and screenwriter for François Ozon, releases her first feature film, Dans ma peau, in...
25 January 2019
Rocky, Rambo... or the 1980s myth of the ultra-powerful bodybuilder, whose muscles represent Reagan's American imperialism. He wins the war, all by himself; he's the symbol of the excesses of the prevailing ultra-liberalism. Rambo: First Blood Part II, an anti...
28 December 2018
The mercenary is a somewhat marginal yet recurring figure in film history. Most of the time, he operates as a loner, but this individualistic freewheeler can also be part of a group. They appear as ronin in Japanese martial arts movies, as gunslingers in westerns, or...
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...