REVIEW:
BRITISH PREMIERE & FUNDRAISER
Sunday, 8th October - 8pm
Hoxton Hall, 130 Hoxton Road, Shoreditch, London N1

This once Victorian Music Hall with its blood red walls and black wrought iron balconies was the ideal surrounding for the first UK public screening of Maldoror. Set against a tiered blackened stage, accented only by pools of red light, the stark square screen held a projection of an ornate tomb festooned with flowers and ivy. This all served to underscore the evening's gothic ambiance. The stalls filled under the edgy gaze of the crew and film makers shuffling about on the balcony. Meanwhile, things became rather fraught in the foyer with the queue reaching out into the street and the ticket book thinning at an alarming rate. Finally the doors were shut on a few dismayed stragglers with no option but to make their way to a nearby pub, determined to be early for the next screening. Many of the punters had found their way upstairs to the balcony chasing the last few available seats. Duncan Reekie began proceedings by introducing Karsten Weber, his German counterpart who'd come over from Kiel. Weber confided that he felt somewhat frustrated that it had taken the English six months to get their screening together when in Germany they'd already shown the film ten times! With a bit of indulgence from the audience, the stereotypes played the field for a while until the giggling faded and the film slithered through the gate. Ten minutes into the screening, a fire alarm went off somewhere in the building just as the second chapter had the audience lost in a hostile claymation underworld. Glued to the screen, the audience was totally oblivious as the house staff ran about seeking the possible cause and more importantly, the off switch. The staff had only just recovered from a real fire earlier when a light fell unnoticed on a rolled up carpet up on the top balcony, burning into its brittle weave a square hole which left the auditorium filled with swirling acrid smoke. All too soon the first reel came to its flapping end and the punters were turned out into the bar.

Still caught in reverie, they drifted around the bar, amongst projections of graves and tombs. Blinking and unsure, they clutched their bottles of beer, some lazily surveyed the offerings from a 'tuck shop' (baked potatoes, crisps and Twix bars). Moments after lighting up, fancying a chocolate or looking at the decor, they were called back to their seats. The second reel; the fourth chapter out of twelve was flickering onto the screen. It was going to be a demanding night. Upstairs all was going well. The background whirr of the 16mm projector and mumblings of the film makers and crew did little to bother the row of faces illuminated with the scratchy glow of the 16mm Super 8 epic. This audience had a determination about them, some had come from as far as Cambridge and Cornwall to see this tribute to the bloody mindedness of a 19th century boy and 21st century fools. A corner of the balcony played host to the nervous presence of the German film makers keen to see how the film would go down in London and to experience the English voice over, so different in tone to the German crime writer's version. By the third interval it was clear that people were saturated. There is only so much any sane being can take and eight episodes of this overwhelming product, is probably it (especially late on a Sunday night). As the fourth and final reel whirred into focus, the die hards moved to the best seats. The beers had washed down the spuds and Twix bars and the bar was being packed away. The film-makers who had taken to the bar as reporters do in a war, shared anecdotes, finished off the last of the beers and seemed pretty pleased that this acid test had become another strangely satisfying night in the no-budget ghetto. The sound of applause suddenly resonated through the building - it was time to begin the real work; taking down all the equipment, rewinding the film and transporting it all to its safehouse deep in South East London.