Oops

I forgot to collect the "Name This Blog" contest entries! I am sure this was troubling for all of you.

Please give them to me this Thursday.

P.A.

The Satanic Screen--now required

This wonderful book is available used or new on Amazon for between $8 and $14.

I recently found out that having articles copied from it into a packet will cost at least that much and take a while, so I'd like to ask students to purchase their own copy. I can also put copies of the reading assignments on reserve in the library, but the book will be much more convenient for everyone. This will make your total cost for texts for the course no more than $23, and far less if you get a used copy of this. Not bad.

So please get a copy of this as soon as possible! Within a week. The readings will, along with the others, form the basis for paper assignments and the mid-term exam. Sorry to drop this on you now, but I only found out Friday that the bookstore failed to order these when I requested them at the end of last semester...

Readings, etc.

Please read over this short article on Kenneth Anger's career for next week. The reading packet also has an excellent article on the color structure of Invocation of My Demon Brother entitled "Magick in Theory and Practice" (which also happens to be the title of a book by Aleister Crowley), which should also be very applicable to some of the issues concerned with this week's second viewing, Night of the Demon, and next week's. The Devil Rides Out. As well, the discussion of color structure will be very relevant to our viewing of Rosemary's Baby.

Next week we will be discussing the elements of occult imagery in cinema, as well as the social context of the occult revival of the 1960s.

Beginning the following week, we will start having oral presentations in class.

Contest!

As we discussed in class, I am conducting a contest for a new name for this blog.

The contestant who comes up withe the most pretentious name for the blog will win a prize!

Also, the contesant who comes up with the best name for the blog will also win a prize!

Entries must be handwritten on small scraps of paper and submitted in class on Tuesday January 29, 2008. The decisions of the judges will be final. Winners will be announced on Tuesday February 5, 2008.

Wilkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome...

Welcome to Les Bijoux Macabre, the blog for The Occult in Cinema, a seminar being offered at Emerson College this semester, Spring 2008. This blog will feature articles, links, musings and other resources for students and anyone else interested in the topics we'll be discussing. This is a public blog, so readers who are not enrolled in the class are also welcome to visit and participate. Students will be expected to participate regularly throughout the semester, responding to readings and posting their own thoughts and resources.

Although we will be looking briefly at the history of the occult in cinema, beginning with Melies and his interest in magic and illusion, we will mainly be concentrating on contemporary cinema from the 1960s onward. Experimental, mainstream and documentary forms will be screened and discussed, along with the social, artistic and cultural contexts pertinent to the various film texts. We'll mainly focus on American cinema but some British and European films will also find their way into the mix.