Please note this is NOT a ZOOM Lecture but an in person lecture. Tickets include a complimentary glass of Devil’s Botany Chocolate Absinthe. Doors open at 6:30pm and talk starts at 7pm
Victorian filmmakers were fascinated by ghosts and the occult; in their jubilant experiments at the birth of cinema, they explored everything from effects for the creation of ghosts, to skits about seances and spiritualists, to speculations about the ‘ghostliness’ of the new medium itself. In our time, with more than 90% of Victorian films presumed lost, how do the ghosts of these filmmakers and films haunt the narratives of film history? How do spectral traces of little-studied figures – the disruptive, the marginalised, the unclassifiable – lurk in the margins of those narratives? Most of all, how does the documentary detritus of the archive provide us with material for research ‘seances’, opportunities for ghostly reconstruction?
Join theatre and film scholar Alex Kirstukas for a lecture that features a selection of surviving early ‘ghost films’ with live commentary, and calls upon Victorian seance practices for an interactive experiment in raising the ghosts of intriguing films now lost.
Devil’s Botany is the UK’s first absinthe distillery, founded by Directors of The Last Tuesday Society’s Absinthe Parlour. Celebrating spirit’s connection to art, literature, magic & mixology, Devil’s Botany is unleashing the future of absinthe with bold expressions for the adventurous drinkers of today. The Last Tuesday Society’s curious Monday night lecture series is sponsored by Devil’s Botany.
The venue opens at 18:30. Doors will close at 19:00 to avoid disrupting the speaker. We kindly ask that all guests arrive before 19:00. Refunds are not possible for in person events with less than seven days notice in any circumstances. Please note, the museum of curiosities is not opened on Mondays during our lectures.
