Vampire Film Festival comes to Oxford's Ultimate Picture Palace this October (NEWS)
On Saturday 15th October 2022, Oxford’s historic The Ultimate Picture Palace will host “Blood & Celluloid: Vampire Film Festival” – a 12-hour all-day film festival celebrating classic vampire movies. The festival, which has been supported by the BFI Film Audience Network, will feature five films, special guest introductions, panel discussions, prize giveaways, and free food and drink for festival pass holders. Festival passes (limited to 50) are on sale now, along with tickets to individual screenings.
Booking link: www.uppcinema.com/vampire-film-festival
Taking place between midday and midnight, the festival features: Neil Jordan’s 1994 gothic romance Interview With The Vampire, introduced by Dr Sam George and Dr Bill Hughes of the Open Graves, Open Hearts Project; French erotic horror Fascination, preceded by a talk about the film’s director Jean Rollin by Professor Patricia MacCormack; 1980s cult classic The Hunger, starring Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie, introduced by Dr Anton Bitel, University of Oxford; Abel Ferrara’s black-and-white vampiric nightmare The Addiction; and culminating with Jim Jarmusch’s modern classic Only Lovers Left Alive, starring Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston.
“Vampire stories hold a bloodied mirror up to the fairytales we tell ourselves, giving us permission to be monstrous. After living in our tombs for the last few years, this festival seeks to show what it is to be inhuman, to grasp for light in a world of darkness. We live in a world haunted by monsters, but maybe you can find some beauty and humanity in these ones.” Ben Attfield, Blood & Celluloid: Vampire Film Festival Programmer
Guest speakers will introduce screenings and take part in a Q&A to discuss the themes explored within the vampire genre such as gender and identity, sexual fluidity, and urban decay.
“Since their animation out of folk materials in the nineteenth century in Dracula, vampires have been continually reborn in modern culture. They have fascinated us down the years in all their various manifestations and cultural forms, but it is film that has reinvented and reanimated them, giving sustenance to our most beloved gothic monster.” Dr Sam George, Associate Professor of Research, University of Hertfordshire and Convener of Open Graves, Open Minds Project.
Festival passes on now on sale for £30 (with a “Pay Less” option of £25 and a "Pay More” option of £35) with pass holders getting entry to all five films as well as complimentary food from a pop-up bakery during a lunch break and free Bloody Mary cocktails before the festival’s final two screenings.
Festival Schedule:
11:00: Doors open for registration
12:00: Interview With The Vampire + Q&A
15:50: Fascination
17:50: The Hunger
20:30: The Addiction
22:00: Only Lovers Left Alive
Blood & Celluloid: Vampire Film Festival at the Ultimate Picture Palace is part of In Dreams Are Monsters: A Season of Horror Films, a UK-wide film season supported by the National Lottery and BFI Film Audience Network. indreamsaremonsters.co.uk