Événement

Night of the Living Dead

Shot outside of Pittsburgh at a fraction of the cost of a Hollywood feature by a band of filmmakers determined to make their mark, George A. Romeros Night of the Living Dead is one of the great stories of independent cinema: a midnight hit turned box-office smash that became one of the most influential films of all time. A deceptively simple tale of a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse who find themselves fending off a horde of flesh-eating ghouls newly arisen from their graves, Romeros claustrophobic vision of a late-sixties America (literally) tearing itself apart rewrote the rules of the horror genre, combined gruesome gore with acute social commentary, and quietly broke ground by casting a black actor (Duane Jones) in the lead role. After decades of poor-quality prints and video transfers, Night of the Living Dead can finally be seen for the immaculately crafted film that it is thanks to a new 4K restoration, scanned from the original camera negative and supervised by Romero himself. Stark, haunting, and more relevant than ever, Night of the Living Dead is back.

"There may never be a zombie movie that will match the impact of Night of the Living Dead, because it was so far ahead of its time. It still sets the standard for low budget horror filmmaking, where minimal elements enhance the feeling of terror. The tight closeups and handheld camerawork give a documentary realism to this single interior setting, transforming a country house into a claustrophobic urgency." Kevin B. Lee, Fandor

"Romeros debut is still an object lesson in independent filmmaking: Rather than cover up his distance from Hollywood (budgetary and geographical ), Romero embraces it. The resulting film boasts a sharp sense of locationthe suburbs and rural areas outlying Pittsburghand an understanding that the banal makes the horror all the more scary when it arrives." Ben Sachs, Cine-File

"Cinema as state of emergency, zombiedom as humanitys putrefied mirror, thats Romero with handheld camera and stringy viscera discovering a new visage of horror. Fervent light and smeary shadow lend a Friedlander effect A view from a boars head mounted on the wall tilts down to a music box in a characteristic fusion of Psycho and Cocteau The epidemic is contained at the close but Romeros apocalypse is only getting started." Cinepassion