Gratian: The Real Life Werewolf (1995)

Gratian: The Real Life Werewolf (1995)

You can watch the full documentary on YouTube here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H508UPJiRCY]. It is a short story of a real life werewolf told by the inhabitants of this small village in Romenia. Gratian receives food and clothing from the villagers, so that when he turns into a werewolf, he doesn't go after people's sheep. Much beyond the subject in question itself, this episode draws attention to documentary film as a genre, and how the director Thomas Ciulei proposes a non-colonial gaze to oral history, and non-scientific methods for documenting the life of people.

The Cursed (2021)

Released in the Sundance Film Festival in the cursed year of 2020 as Eight for Silver, The Cursed is a 19th-century victorian gothic folk horror featuring a familiar monster as an allegory for dwelling identities within the same body: the civilized human and the bestial monster. Desaturated color pallettes and muted, modest garments set the tone for foggy gray skies by day, and nightmares inhabited by human scarecrows and silver fangs by night. Directed by Sean Ellis, The Cursed is a suprisingly slow-burn lycanthrope film supernaturally reprimanding white colonialism, extending the legacy of violence to a whole lineage within this small oligarchic society.

Carnival of Souls (1962)

A car crash and a new beginning. Carnival of Souls depicts the solitude of provincial living in the southwest United States in the 1960s from the perspective of a woman who also works as a church organ player. Despite her efforts to live a normal life, she is haunted by a ghostly presence that leads her into learning wild secrets about her own existence. This is my season finale, an incredibly interesting series of plot twist coming from many levels fading in and out in style between scenes. The episode contains huge spoilers so I recommend you watch it first. R.I.P.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)

After an year-long hybernation period, I have returned from the darkness bringing you Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, a film that flatens many existences and realms once separated by the restrictions of time, space, and societal norms. A beautiful visual rendering of a book from 1983 called A Man Who Can Recall His Past Lives by Buddhist abbot Phra Sripariyattiwet. A terminal illness thins out otherwise physical barriers of existence as Boonmee navigates through past lives to find reason and understanding.

The Phantom Carriage (1921)

Legend goes that the last person to die on New Years' Eve becomes the Coachman in charge of collecting the souls of the dead until someone else takes their place in this nefarious task. The Phantom Carriage is a silent-film from what is known as the Golden Era of Swedish cinema. Directer and Starred by Victor Sjostrom, this classic is a masterclass in special effects and spectral superimposition with the most beautiful soundtrack by Matti Bye.