Avant-première Hexham Heads + Concert
’24
Lange Steenstraat 14
B-9000 Gent
Lange Steenstraat 14
B-9000 Gent
On Halloween Night, Art Cinema OFFoff presents the Belgian avant-premiere of Hexham Heads, the experimental horror film by Chloë Delanghe and Mattijs Driesen.
Before the screening, there will be a performance by Sam Comerford and Branwen Kavanagh who collaborated on the music of the film.
Afterwards, you are invited to a reception and a mid-length, late-night Halloween film that will be kept secret!
Timetable
19:00 Concert
20:00 Hexham Heads
20:30 Drinks / Reception
22:00 Surprise film*
*Ends early enough to catch the last trains back to Brussels or Antwerp!
Sam Comerford
Sam Comerford (b. 1991 Salem, Massachusetts) is a saxophonist, musician and composer from Dublin. He lives and works in Brussels. Together with Hendrik Lasure and Jens Bouttery, he forms the jazz trio Thunderblender that’s working on a second album after their critically acclaimed debut Stillorgan (WERF records, 2020). Alongside his own musical activities, he maintains a busy schedule touring and recording in various projects incorporating elements of jazz, improvised music and Irish music. He’s an artistic researcher at KASK & Conservatorium (School of Arts Gent). Comerford composed and produced the soundtrack of Hexham Heads.
ca. 40′
Branwen Kavanagh
Branwen Kavanagh is a singer, musician, composer, performance artist and puppeteer from the West of Ireland, inspired by folklore, dada, poetry, theatre and led by a powerful imagination. This year, they have released two albums of their original compositions with Twin Headed Wolf (Altarwise) and Rufous Nightjar (Songs for Three Voices), and are in the process of completing their next solo album as Branwen. They also work as a vocal improvisor for art pieces, scores, live collaborations and endurance performances. Branwen collaborated on the soundtrack of Hexham Heads as a vocalist.
ca. 40′
Chloë Delanghe & Mattijs Driesen
Hexham Heads
In 1971, a family living in the town of Hexham was plagued by a series of paranormal events. After bringing a pair of small stone heads into their home, the family became terrorized by the ghostly sounds and images these objects exerted. Hexham Heads adopts an impressionistic approach to this contemporary folk tale.
Using the story as a point of departure, the film guides us through a multitude of spaces in which time and matter become still-frozen, stretched, and repeated. A darkroom, an apartment, a house, a warehouse for construction materials, are all connected and portrayed through the spectral lens of photography.
Tinted by the red safelight of the darkroom, the film (re)constructs a breathless pastoral horror about a place crystallized in time and terrorized by two 6cm tall stone heads whose current location remains unknown. We visit Rede Avenue – the original source of this supernatural energy – through the shivery stillness of Chloë Delanghe’s grainy photographs and an erratic composition of Sam Comerford performed by an ensemble of musicians across Ireland and Belgium. In Hexham Heads the joint mysteries of photosensitivity and the stone tape theory – which speculates on how minerals can record and replay the energy of hauntings – create a volatile chemical reaction. Delanghe and Driesen defy the impossibility of capturing ghosts in the lens by immersing us in a psychogeographical journey through infinite doors, windows and passages. (Ane Lopez, BFMAF)
