Bela Lugosi in “White Zombie” screening on 16mm with white zombie cocktails!!

Date: Wednesday November 4th
Time: 8pm
Admission:$10
Location: Morbid Anatomy Museum, 424 Third Avenue, 11215 Brooklyn NY

Tickets Here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2182084

The Morbid Anatomy Museum is pleased to present a 16mm film screening of what is often acknowledged as the world’s first “zombie movie” — a horror movie curio from 1932 resplendent in its ghoulish atmosphere, featuring a sinister Bela Lugosi made up in chin whiskers and menacing monobrow.

Young newlyweds in Haiti are stalked by the zombie master Murder Legendre — played with jaunty aplomb by Lugosi still fresh from his legendary role as Dracula — who carves figures in wax to ensnare the fresh corpses of his victims. The movie’s rather insubstantial plot is more than compensated by its plangently exquisite visuals. Ashen-faced zombies under Lugosi’s spell stare blankly from shadowy eyes, move woodenly through the eerie nocturnal landscape of archetypal horror movie sets, from the hillside cemetery to the high-perched cliffside castle with its winding staircases and deadly oubliettes. The bespelled zombie mistress looks down from the balcony far above the crashing waves, in the long and flowing white dress of a medieval princess. A vulture lurking on the contorted branch of a lifeless tree cries out with an almost human shriek.

The film is also curiously noteworthy for its implicit critique of colonialism in the grim depiction of enslaved undead toiling in wretched subjugation to enrich the entrepreneurial sugar mill owner.

To add a note of festiveness to the experience White Zombie cocktails will be served prior to the screening — mixed by the Museum’s Resident Film Programmer and Arcane Media Specialist Joel Schlemowitz — and you are welcome to imbibe during the movie . . . for those who wish to partake of the spirit of the evening the White Zombie Drinking Game consists of having a quaff whenever Lugosi’s menacing, cold-eyed stare fills the screen!

Joel Schlemowitz is an experimental filmmaker based in Brooklyn who works in 16mm film, shadowplay, and stereographic media. He has recently completed his first feature film 78rpm, an experimental documentary about the gramophone. His short works have been shown at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and Tribeca Film Festival and have received awards from the Chicago Underground Film Festival, The Dallas Video Festival, and elsewhere. Shows of installation artworks include Anthology Film Archives, and Microscope Gallery. He teaches experimental filmmaking at The New School and is Resident Film Programmer and Arcane Media Specialist at the Morbid Anatomy Museum.www.joelschlemowitz.com