Movie: Berberian Sound System (Horror)

Date/Time
Date(s) - 07/12/2013
11:00 pm

Location
Cinema Arts Centre

Category(ies)

• movie

Toby Jones gives a bravura performance as a mild-mannered British sound engineer who finds himself in over his head when he travels to Rome to record the soundtrack to an Italian horror movie. “Berberian Sound System” screens in the new monthly Late Night Cinema series. There will be another performance for earlier birds, Wednesday, July 17 at 7:30.

www.CinemaArtsCentre.org

Regular admission: $11 at the door

http://www.cinemaartscentre.org/event/berberian-sound-system/

For his second feature, the young British director Peter Strickland (Katalin Varga) has created an alternately cheerful and caustic valentine to the low-budget “giallo” horror films that populated Italian cinema throughout the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s. The year is 1976 and a mild-mannered British sound engineer named Gilderoy (the delightful Toby Jones) arrives in Rome to work on the post-synchronized soundtrack to The Equestrian Vortex, a tale of witchcraft and murder set inside an all-girl riding academy. Instead of showing us any scenes from this lurid movie-within-the-movie, however, Strickland keeps his focus squarely on the mayhem within the sound studio itself, as Gilderoy and his team plunge carving knives into fruits and vegetables, actresses try out various shrieks and screams in the recording booth, and a pompous director struts about comparing his schlock to high art. Then, gradually, the line between cinema and reality blurs, and Gilderoy can no longer tell if he is merely working on this movie or is perhaps its very subject. Decked out in fastidious period detail and a keen appreciation for the suggestive power of sound, Berberian Sound Studio is a creepy treat for cinephiles and horror fans alike.

Winner: Best Film, Best Director (Peter Strickland) and Best Actor (Toby Jones) at FrightFest 2012! UK, 2012, 92 min., color, Blu-ray | Director-Writer: Peter Strickland | Cast: Toby Jones, Tonia Sotiropoulou, Cosimo Fusco, Susanna Cappellaro, Layla Amir, Hilda Péter, Chiara D’Anna | 2012 New York Film Festival / 2012 Toronto Film Festival