Orchestrator of Storms: The Fantastique World of Jean Rollin, from here on simply Orchestrator of Storms, is a long overdue examination of the works of French filmmaker Jean Rollin, a man who has been labelled everything from an auteur to a pornographer and a hack.
Writer/directors Dima Ballin and Kat Ellinger have worked together on several previous documentary shorts about genre films and filmmakers such as The Tale of Mr. Corman and Mr. Poe and The Magnificent Obsession of Michael Reeves as well as on individual projects. However, coming in at an hour and fifty-two minutes Orchestrator of Storms is anything but short.
Orchestrator of Storms picks up almost from the moment of Rollin’s birth to a father who worked in the theatre and a mother who had been an artist’s model. It was his mother who raised him after his father left. The film explores how...
Writer/directors Dima Ballin and Kat Ellinger have worked together on several previous documentary shorts about genre films and filmmakers such as The Tale of Mr. Corman and Mr. Poe and The Magnificent Obsession of Michael Reeves as well as on individual projects. However, coming in at an hour and fifty-two minutes Orchestrator of Storms is anything but short.
Orchestrator of Storms picks up almost from the moment of Rollin’s birth to a father who worked in the theatre and a mother who had been an artist’s model. It was his mother who raised him after his father left. The film explores how...
- 2/14/2023
- by Jim Morazzini
- Nerdly
Because who hasn't had or wanted to have sex in a cemetary, right? The documentary Orchestrator of Storms: The Fantastique World Of Jean Rollin is rolling out on the Arrow video player next Tuesday, February 14th. Appropriately it seems, we have been given an exclusive clip from the doc about Rollin's film The Iron Rose where a young couple gallavant through a cemetary until they realize they're trapped. They still find time to make love in a crypt. Because Rollin. Has there been a genre artist more fundamentally misunderstood and inappropriately discussed than Jean Rollin? He remains one of genre cinema’s most singular poets, a theatrical fantasist, interpreter of dreams, orchestrator of storms. His recurring use of twin or paired protagonists...
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[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 2/10/2023
- Screen Anarchy
Orchestrator of Storms: The Fantastique World of Jean Rollin, from here on simply Orchestrator of Storms, is a long overdue examination of the works of French filmmaker Jean Rollin, a man who has been labelled everything from an auteur to a pornographer and a hack.
Writer/directors Dima Ballin and Kat Ellinger have worked together on several previous documentary shorts about genre films and filmmakers such as The Tale of Mr. Corman and Mr. Poe and The Magnificent Obsession of Michael Reeves as well as on individual projects. However, coming in at an hour and fifty-two minutes Orchestrator of Storms is anything but short.
Orchestrator of Storms picks up almost from the moment of Rollin’s birth to a father who worked in the theatre and a mother who had been an artist’s model. It was his mother who raised him after his father left. The film explores how...
Writer/directors Dima Ballin and Kat Ellinger have worked together on several previous documentary shorts about genre films and filmmakers such as The Tale of Mr. Corman and Mr. Poe and The Magnificent Obsession of Michael Reeves as well as on individual projects. However, coming in at an hour and fifty-two minutes Orchestrator of Storms is anything but short.
Orchestrator of Storms picks up almost from the moment of Rollin’s birth to a father who worked in the theatre and a mother who had been an artist’s model. It was his mother who raised him after his father left. The film explores how...
- 7/29/2022
- by Jim Morazzini
- Nerdly
There’s nothing quite like an old-fashioned ghost story. In cinema, however, their traditional format has become familiar to the point of boredom. When a fresh take on supernatural, atmospheric horror comes around, it’s a rare gift, usually coming to us from the festival circuit. A gem crafted in this spirit recently premiered at Tiff and screened at the Sitges Film Festival. While its recourses are slim, the Halifax-based production The Crescent uses them to create one of the most chilling films I’ve seen this year.
Seth Smith’s second feature follows a young mother, played with endearing honesty by Danika Vandersteen, who moves into her family’s seaside house after her husband dies. Enigmatic occurrences and strange locals hint at a supernatural threat, but the truth is even darker, leading to a psychological nightmare as the mother seeks to protect her son—if her grief doesn’t devour her first.
Seth Smith’s second feature follows a young mother, played with endearing honesty by Danika Vandersteen, who moves into her family’s seaside house after her husband dies. Enigmatic occurrences and strange locals hint at a supernatural threat, but the truth is even darker, leading to a psychological nightmare as the mother seeks to protect her son—if her grief doesn’t devour her first.
- 10/20/2017
- by Ben Larned
- DailyDead
Editor’s note: The following is an exclusive excerpt from “’Castles of Subversion’ Continued: From the Roman Noir and Surrealism to Jean Rollin” by Virginie Sélavy. This essay is featured in “Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollins,” which is available now. To celebrate the book’s release, curator and editor Samm Deighan will be on hand to introduce a special screening of Rollin’s 1971 film “The Shiver of the Vampires” at the Brooklyn Horror Festival on October 14.
Usually deserted or abandoned, often in ruins or in a state of decay, sometimes captured just before demolition, always bearing the melancholy traces of human presence, locations are key to Jean Rollin’s cinema and often were the starting points for his films. Three in particular recur throughout his work: the famous Dieppe beach (specifically Pourville-sur-Mer), the cemetery, and the castle. The latter two are typical Gothic locations and an...
Usually deserted or abandoned, often in ruins or in a state of decay, sometimes captured just before demolition, always bearing the melancholy traces of human presence, locations are key to Jean Rollin’s cinema and often were the starting points for his films. Three in particular recur throughout his work: the famous Dieppe beach (specifically Pourville-sur-Mer), the cemetery, and the castle. The latter two are typical Gothic locations and an...
- 9/25/2017
- by Indiewire Staff
- Indiewire
The era of cinema referred to as Eurohorror is defined by its eroticism, over-the-top violence, and psychedelic supernatural approaches to storytelling. It’s a rabbit hole of movie culture. There are twisting avenues and bizarre subsections that seem endless, but few filmmakers created a library as compulsively watchable and weirdly hypnotizing as Jean Rollin’s. This man’s filmography is massive, a good amount of them representing his work-for-hire hardcore movies and the cheesier selection of horror films. One gets what one might expect: waif-like young women seducing men, seducing each other, and drinking gallons of bright red blood.
Yet something sets Rollin’s films apart from similar offerings: they’re literate. Rollin draws many of his plots from classic Gothic romances. He must have adapted Carmilla in one form or another a dozen times. Sheridan Le Fanu’s story, about an innocent girl seduced by a lonely but evil companion,...
Yet something sets Rollin’s films apart from similar offerings: they’re literate. Rollin draws many of his plots from classic Gothic romances. He must have adapted Carmilla in one form or another a dozen times. Sheridan Le Fanu’s story, about an innocent girl seduced by a lonely but evil companion,...
- 4/25/2017
- by Ben Larned
- DailyDead
The wait is almost over, Ultimate Night of the Living Dead #3 issues will be released on February 24th. Also in this round-up: details on The X-Files UFO event, Shudder's partnership with Sundance Film Festival, two Doctor Who Blu-rays, Yoga Hosers comic, and House Shark.
Ultimate Night of the Living Dead #3: "For those of you that have been looking for our 3rd issues, your patience will be rewarded. Issue 3 Super Packs and individual titles will be released on February 24th, 2016.
Follow as Evans County continues to fall into the grips of an undead invasion. See the invasion from 10 different perspectives.
Sh*t’s about to get real."
---------
The X-Files UFO: "It’s an Out-Of-This-World X-Files Experience That Fans Won’t Want to Miss
Come See the UFO Today in Los Angeles At The Grove (189 Grove Dr., La) from 8:00 Am – 10:00 Pm
Share your Pictures on Your Favorite...
Ultimate Night of the Living Dead #3: "For those of you that have been looking for our 3rd issues, your patience will be rewarded. Issue 3 Super Packs and individual titles will be released on February 24th, 2016.
Follow as Evans County continues to fall into the grips of an undead invasion. See the invasion from 10 different perspectives.
Sh*t’s about to get real."
---------
The X-Files UFO: "It’s an Out-Of-This-World X-Files Experience That Fans Won’t Want to Miss
Come See the UFO Today in Los Angeles At The Grove (189 Grove Dr., La) from 8:00 Am – 10:00 Pm
Share your Pictures on Your Favorite...
- 1/23/2016
- by Tamika Jones
- DailyDead
Above: The Iron Rose
The early films by Jean Rollin are different pockets of the same world. The stretch of beach near Dieppe acts as a portal connecting these pockets, which are populated by vampires, clowns, wide-eyed innocents, and the generally inexplicable. Watching them, we’re caught in the midst of waking dreams, all springing from the same mind. When mention is made of a “Jean Rollin film,” these early films are the ones that people think of first. The creations of a dreamer who is wrapped in a reverie, letting ideas and images affix themselves to celluloid as they wish. Like many films, they reflect their maker; someone intoxicated by mystery, surreality, and the bizarre. Unlike other filmmakers, who are able to simply (or, more likely, not so simply) spin out variation after variation of their established prototype, Rollin had to rise from his slumber. The films he made...
The early films by Jean Rollin are different pockets of the same world. The stretch of beach near Dieppe acts as a portal connecting these pockets, which are populated by vampires, clowns, wide-eyed innocents, and the generally inexplicable. Watching them, we’re caught in the midst of waking dreams, all springing from the same mind. When mention is made of a “Jean Rollin film,” these early films are the ones that people think of first. The creations of a dreamer who is wrapped in a reverie, letting ideas and images affix themselves to celluloid as they wish. Like many films, they reflect their maker; someone intoxicated by mystery, surreality, and the bizarre. Unlike other filmmakers, who are able to simply (or, more likely, not so simply) spin out variation after variation of their established prototype, Rollin had to rise from his slumber. The films he made...
- 12/2/2013
- by Alex Hansen
- MUBI
Okay, mark it, May 31st, 2012: The day I encountered a Jean Rollin flick that I just didn't like. The Demoniacs is an unusual film in Rollin's catalog for a number of reasons. The most obvious difference is the lack of vampires, though that is not without precedent. Hell, The Iron Rose didn't have any vampires and I loved that movie. I think what lost me here was the lack of immediacy. Rollin's films are never very long, they generally top out around ninety minutes, but they are usually fairly judicious with their content, and even the less action packed segments are often used as a way of building tension. I get the feeling that Rollin went a little crazy with the self-indulgence and...
- 6/1/2012
- Screen Anarchy
Jean Rollin "was a double outsider," argues Dave Kehr in the New York Times, "a filmmaker drawn to the fantastique in a country that had a limited tradition of genre filmmaking as well as a proud tradition of Cartesian rationalism that discouraged explorations of the supernatural. What France did offer, however, was a thriving interest in eroticism, and when Rollin was finally able to make his first feature, The Rape of the Vampire (1968), he did so by combining his childhood fascination with American cliffhanger serials and early-20th-century French fantasists like Gaston Leroux (author of The Phantom of the Opera) with gauzy nudes and exotic couplings." The British company Redemption is "collaborating with Kino International to release handsomely remastered Blu-rays, taken from the original camera negatives, of five key Rollin titles: The Nude Vampire (1970), The Shiver of the Vampires (1971), The Iron Rose (1973), Lips of Blood (1975) and Fascination (1979)."
"Entering Rollin's cinematic...
"Entering Rollin's cinematic...
- 1/30/2012
- MUBI
For our fourth excursion in the world of Jean Rollin, we travel back to the realm of the vampire with Lips of Blood. This film seems rather tame in comparison to The Iron Rose, and the plot, somewhat pedestrian. However, because Rollin has such a distinguished style, the journey nonetheless remains fascinating and mesmerizing. This isn't my favorite of the Rollin discs, as the idea seems a bit too thin to stretch out an entire film over, but such is life, and it managed to hold my attention anyway. Regardless, Kino's Blu-ray has been restored and treated with kid gloves, giving home video viewers easily the best presentation of Lips of Blood ever to appear on their screens.Jean-Loup Philippe stars as Frederic, a maternally-dominated young...
- 1/23/2012
- Screen Anarchy
The third step in our continuing exploration of the work of Jean Rollin on Blu-ray is an unusual film in his oeuvre. The Iron Rose features no vampires, no female twins, and no significant bloodletting. What it does feature is atmosphere by the truckload. This is one of Rollin's best, if least typical films. Kino's Blu-ray of The Iron Rose shows the care they've put into the project by presenting us with a faithful image devoid of digital molestation, and the overall package remains outstanding. These discs are quickly rocketing to the top of my favorites of 2012.The Iron Rose is a haunting experience - a macabre tone poem about youth and age, love and nihilism, nostalgia and superstition, and, above all, life and death....
- 1/20/2012
- Screen Anarchy
Euro-sleaze fans rejoice! 2012 will bring a slew of remastered, restored films by Jean Rollin to blu-ray, thanks to Kino Lorber. The distribution company, led by director/producer Bret Wood, will release nearly a dozen classic films from the French filmmaker. For those who are not familiar, Rollin (who died in 2010) was best known for his 1960s and 1970s films that mix horror with soft-core sex. Starting in January, Kino Lorber will be releasing The Nude Vampire, The Shiver of the Vampires, The Iron Rose, Lips of Blood and Fascination, with another half-dozen titles to follow throughout the year. Get more info on the releases, along with some blu-ray stills (warning: images are Nsfw) after the jump. Wood spoke to Rollin...
- 1/4/2012
- FEARnet
Following rounds 1 and 2, this one will take us right on through the countdown to Halloween and will surely be the most actively updated of the bunch. Best to begin, then, by grounding it in a classic, so we turn to David Kalat: "Frankenstein isn't a science fiction story about an arrogant scientist who intrudes on God's domain, it's a metaphor about our relationship to God." That's his argument, and I'll let him explain, but I want to pull back to a couple of earlier sentences in his piece. Mary Shelley's novel, "and the 1910 film version, treated the 'science' of Frankenstein as just so much folderol, a MacGuffin to introduce the artificial man into the story. Whale was so good at providing a reasonably convincing visualization of reviving the dead — no, more than that, a stunningly satisfying visualization of reviving the dead — it focused popular attention on that part of...
- 10/27/2011
- MUBI
Kino Lorber today announced their acquisition of Redemption Films' library of euro-horror classics for release in the Us. This collection includes a treasure trove of Jean Rollin's most famous work, among those are The Nude Vampire, The Shiver of the Vampire, The Iron Rose, Lips of Blood, and Fascination. The best part of this news is that all five of these films are scheduled to release on Blu-ray and DVD next spring from Kino, who have an overall outstanding record in high definition.The full press release is below, and it details some of the fantastic things we have to look forward to from this acquisition, including bonus material from the venerable Tim Lucas of Video Watchdog. Lucas is a veritable encyclopedia of euro-horror knowledge and...
- 10/21/2011
- Screen Anarchy
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