Carnival of Souls
Cinema is a screen onto which we can project our fears, torments and the monstrosities of the world. The screen protects us from what we see, but cinema has also permanently anchored our nightmares around a few powerful images (empty houses, hostile attics and basements, demonic masks, bloodcurdling grimaces, disturbing postures). Throughout the summer, the Cinémathèque québécoise will be presenting a series of films encompassing more than one hundred and twenty years of horror, reminding us that what scares us most is to make the deepest of our fears tangible and credible.
After a car accident, an organist named Mary is haunted by visions and obsessed by an abandoned dance pavilion. The film explores alienation and psychological disorientation in a dark, unsettling atmosphere.
Herk Harvey
Harold Arnold "Herk" Harvey (June 3, 1924 – April 3, 1996) was an American film director, screenwriter, actor and film producer, perhaps best known for his 1962 horror film Carnival of Souls. Harvey developed the idea for the film after driving past the abandoned Saltair Pavilion in Salt Lake City, Utah. Hiring an unknown New York actress, Lee Strasberg-trained Hilligoss, and otherwise employing mostly local talent, Harvey shot Carnival of Souls in three weeks, on location in Lawrence and Salt Lake City, using a script penned by Centron associate John Clifford. Originally marketed as a B film and released by an upstart distribution company that quickly went bankrupt, Carnival of Souls never gained widespread public attention upon its original release but today has become hailed as a cult classic.
