Collage by Chloe Leeson
Women in Horror Month aims to showcase and carve out a space for women in the horror genre. Whether this be behind the scenes, writing, directing, producing or on-screen badass-ery. A true celebration of everything bloody and brilliant. During the month of February, here at Screenqueens we’re going to be showing off masses of female talent in our showcase, this could be anything from amateur experimental shorts to festival circulating features so keep your eyes peeled.
Aoife is from Ireland and loves horror films. She made two short horrors in sixth form college and her film influences have derived from Silent Hill and the works of David Lynch.
The Illusion of Tranquillity revolves around the hybrid genre of paranormal surrealism, complete with homage to conventions of a ‘Lynchian’ style. What is really occurring is the protagonist is an ongoing victim of torture in their real world, and in this catatonic state has retreated into a fantasy world from which they could not wake up. The dream at the beginning of the film is the protagonists sub-concious psyche subliminally hinting for her to wake up, as she had previously ignored notes that have placed in her world, demanding that she ‘wake up’ and she doesn’t understand the true meaning and motivation underpinning them. With the use of colour imagery, symbolic objects and flashbacks, the protagonist will slowly decipher the hidden message contained within the catalytic plot device of the dream, and draw to the conclusion that they have retreated into a fantasy world to escape their reality of torture and suffering.
Pestilence is loosely based on the storyline to the original Silent Hill game, where there are dual realities within the town- the fog world and the nightmare world. This idea is carried out in the film, where the protagonist has been locked in a room for years with no human contact or light (a reference to real life feral child cases). The character somehow wakes up in the middle of a creepy forest with miscellaneous strange objects hanging from trees. She is found and admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where she convulses and blacks out after receiving an injection. When she awakens she is in her own personal nightmare world, complete with her own inner demons which physically manifest as monsters.
Eli Lewy lives in Berlin, Germany. She’s currently working on 3 documentaries and also has a film review blog.
Gogol to Hell centers on a lonely young woman who yearns for human connection, searching for it in unorthodox ways. She wants to go beyond social etiquette and the facades people care so much about. Gogol to Hell is very loosely based on Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls and was the runner up of a 24 hour horror film competition. The film was written, shot, and edited in a day.
Categories: Women Film-makers
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