Séance Film Festival – Morgiana

Saturday, September 14, 2024 at 9:00pm
Theatre 514, Civic Theatre of Allentown
514 N 19th St, Allentown, PA 18104

Séance Film Festival – Morgiana

Lehigh Valley Cinema Club presents the first Séance Film Festival, a weekend film festival (Friday, July 5 – Sunday, July 7, 2024) celebrating cinema as séance and portal to the afterlife, and the parallels between film projection and reincarnation.

This program contains a new restoration of the 1972 feature film Morgiana, a gem of the Czechoslovak New Wave. Programmer Herb Shellenberger will introduce the film. 

Tickets: $10 per night
Weekend pass: $18
Supporter pass: $40

–Morgiana, dir. Juraj Herz, 1972, Czechoslovakia, digital, 97'

Total running time: 97'

Part fairy-tale, part Gothic horror, Morgiana is a full-blown hallucinatory experience, a twisted take on Edgar Allen Poe's The Black Cat with delirious visuals conjured by cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera (Daisies). Director Juraj Herz (The Cremator) presents the story of twin sisters, Klára and Viktoria who live a life of decadent opulence, somewhere in the late 19th century. Klára is auburn-haired and beautiful, whilst Viktoria is wicked, sadistic, bursting with hate and jealousy. She hatches a terrible revenge by slowly poisoning her more popular sister. As the poison takes hold, Klára begins to lose grip on her sanity... 

Please note! Tickets include entry to this program and the previous Séance Film Festival program—Soda Jerk / Herb Shellenberger / Garden Gate—at 7:00pm in the same venue. 

Thanks to Francisco Aguilar & Haley Arnold (Civic Theatre of Allentown), Brian Belovarac (Janus Films), Bret Berg (American Genre Film Archive), Canyon Cinema Foundation, Rick Charnoski, Jesse Pires (Lightbox Film Center), Chris Regec & Steak (National Sokol's), Doug Roysdon (Ice House Performing Arts Collaborative), Drew Swedberg, the University of Texas at Dallas and all the filmmakers, performers and audience members who have supported this event.