£6.00 (£4.50 conc.)
Doors 3:00pm
VIDEODROME (1983) - 3:30PM
Welcome to Sci-Fi Sundays at Deptford Cinema. Join us for an afternoon movie on the last Sunday of the month. With quarterly themes, our 2018/2019 programme delves into wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff, Earthly welcomes, post-Earths, new flesh and everything in between when it comes to our favourite Science Fiction cinema.
Alongside each screening we’ve organised a little something extra; quizzes, short-films, panel discussions and much more.
Our final theme for our 2018/2019 programme looks inward at the BODY and its evolution and manipulation at the hands of humankind.
dir. David Cronenberg
year. 1983
country. CANADA
run-time. 87min
rating. 18
VIDEODROME
LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH!
Max Renn (James Woods, never better) is the controller of a small Cable TV channel that specialises in “softcore porn and hardcore violence”. Renn is constantly on the lookout for new content ripped from the illegal airwaves to deliver to his insatiable audience.
His tech pirate, Harlan, picks up glimpses of a channel, seemingly from South America, that seems perfect: Videodrome. It’s a show of show of shocking and meaningless violence and Renn is determined to have it. But as he starts to investigate where the show comes from he encounters the demented media mogul Brian Convex who wants to use television to rid America of the weak. Not only does Max begin to suspect the violence and murder on Videodrome is real but that there is something more terrifying going on beneath the surface. Because hidden within the Videodrome broadcast is another signal. A signal that seems to do strange things to the human body…
Cronenberg was inspired to make this film by contemporary fears that violent video content was damaging viewers. Videodrome imagines a world in which watching extreme content does indeed twist and warp its viewers - but in typical Cronenbergian body-horror fashion, the effects are not just mental, but very physical.
Working with legendary special make-up effects artist Rick Baker (An American Werewolf in London) Cronenberg creates some of the most iconic and disturbing images in sci-fi horror. Though inspired by the analog aesthetic of the VHS era, the fears and anxieties explored in Videodrome are just as relevant in today’s world.
THE NEST (2013)
An interview between a doctor and a patient who is convinced that a nest of bugs is growing in her breast. Starring Evelyne Brochu and David Cronenberg.
CAMERA (2000)
A portrait of the actor as an old man. In increasingly claustrophobic close-ups, Leslie Carlson harps on the anxieties of ageing before succumbing to a group of children, who've discovered an old film camera and burst into his apartment, forcing him to star in their production. A meditation on filmmaking as "memory and desire, ageing and death”.
We are really excited to be able to screen this short courtesy of TIFF Reference Library.
