Bleak Week Screenings Bring The Cinema of Despair to Calgary

Globe Cinema, Calgary. Photo by Daman Singh.

Gloomy weather got you down? Well you’re in luck. In partnership with American Cinematheque, Globe Cinema is bringing Bleak Week, a celebration of “cinema of despair,” to Calgary. The festival, in its 5th year running, is bigger than ever with the first ever global expansion, spanning 73 cities and 100 theatres. 

“Every week is a bleak week at Globe Cinema,” says Tanner Wolff, Assistant Manager and Programmer at the Globe. “I like being able to do a theme,” says Wolff, “This seemed like a good opportunity for us to work within a constraint — within a box — which is a fairly large box.”

Wolff has taken Bleak Week as an opportunity to bring movies they’ve never screened at the Globe before. In particular he finds himself excited for Punishment Park (Peter Watkins, 1971), a faux documentary where anti-war liberals are given a choice between prison or three days in Punishment Park in the Californian desert where they get hunted for sport. “Because it's shot like a faux documentary, you kind of get to see both sides of that story play out. You get to hear from the unfortunate criminals as well as the very over eager, very horny,  murderous police officers and it is incredibly relevant today, unfortunately,” he explained.

Bringing in some crowd pleasers and his personal favourites — Twin Peaks and Cure — to balance out the mix. “I like to kind of lure people in with the sugar and then give them Punishment Park and Come and See and some more aggressive cinema that you won't see anywhere else,” he laughed. 

Wolff himself is an avid “lurker,” as he put it, in film communities which is where he finds inspiration for films to screen. Balancing personal favourites with cult classics, he’s extremely excited to bring Twin Peaks: The Return Part 8  “Gotta Light?” to the screen for the opening night double feature with Night of the Living Dead. He explained, “the first movie that came to mind given the subject matter of that Twin Peaks episode, was Night of the Living Dead and that it takes place in a very similar time. It's dealing with semi-similar themes and concepts around original sin and the birth of evil.”

“I think what's a more fitting way to kick off a festival than showing you the real human evil?” Wolff said. “What I really wanted to do was to try to show a variety of films that all had different flavours of despair. I feel pretty confident that we hit that nail on the head. Every film has kind of a different vibe. Every film is dealing with a different subject matter for the most part, and they all have their own style too. I feel like if you came to see all eight films, you'd be able to get something unique from each film while still having your soul completely crushed.”

The lineup is an allegory for Dante’s circles of hell if you think about it, there’s each and every layer for emotional torment, if you fancy that. The irony of it all? Cinema of despair is taking over the Globe right at the brightest days of summer.

Tanner Wolff, Assistant Manager and Programmer at Globe Cinema. Photo by Daman Singh.

And for the Letterboxd freaks out there, Wolff took on the challenge of short pitch-reviews for each of the films being screened during the festival. (Everything is a 5 star, of course.)

Twin Peaks : The Return - Part 8 “Gotta Light?”

“The birth of evil, David Lynch's opus, as far as Twin Peaks, season 3 goes, and the closest thing to an Eraserhead sequel you'll ever see.”

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

“One of the most infamous horror films of the era, birthing a subgenre of horror that everyone still rips off to this day. 
And, one of the most effective examples of how racism is sometimes more insidious than an actual epidemic of flesh eating zombies.”

Enter the Void (2009)

“One of the most technicolour, vivid, dying hallucination memories you'll ever see. Gaspar Noé is a lunatic. This is probably his safest film, but also one of the most transgressive films from the early 2000s, beautifully shot, and just has been burned into my head for years.” 

The Vanishing (1988)

“One of my all-time foreign language film favourites, one of the most like slow burning and insidious films I've ever watched. I love a movie that shows you exactly what it's going to do and you're still horrified and shocked when it pulls that trick. You know it's coming the entire time and you're still just absolutely devastated.” 

Punishment Park (1971)

Unfortunately, incredibly relevant. One of the most raw and aggressively political films I've seen, very on the nose, but also, again, so is the world we live in today, and it feels relevant to play it.

Funny Games (1997)

“Not a feel good film at all. Excellent, but not a feel good film at all.”

Cure (1997)

“A semi-paranormal Japanese take on Silence of the Lambs or like some other cop procedural murder mystery. It is fantastic.  

Come and See (1985)

“The penultimate anti-war film of all time. To this day, one of the movies I‘ve seen, I've only seen it twice and twice as plenty. It is unrelenting and easily the bleakest of all the films in this run”

Bleak Week begins today at the Globe Cinema and runs until the 18th, grab your tickets and as Associate Editor Kenn Enns put it, enjoy some “weird tepid Lexapro induced claps.”