The official synopsis for The Forbidden Room, the latest labyrinthine offering from cerebral Canadian director and writer Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg, The Saddest Music in the World, Tales from the Gimli Hospital) is as follows…

‘A submarine crew, a feared pack of forest bandits, a famous surgeon, and a battalion of child soldiers all get more than they bargained for as they wend their way toward progressive ideas on life and love.’

That’s probably enough said about the story per se – the best approach to watching Forbidden Room is to just let it happen and enjoy every minute of this gleeful, hypnotic and totally deranged phantasmagoria.

The Forbidden Room evolved from the interactive Seances project, with Maddin as the director/medium channeling the spirits of silent films, lost to the archives, through improvised live ‘happenings’. They took place in temporary sets at Montreal’s Phi Center and The Pompidou Centre in Paris, and featured participants such as Geraldine Chaplin, Mathieu Amalric, Charlotte Rampling and Ariane Labed. Taking ‘really hideous, raw video’ and reworking all the palettes and colour-timing on over 4,000 hours of rushes, then experimenting with super-imposition and adding luridly entertaining inter-titles, The Forbidden Room is epic both as a formal filmmaking feat and a deliriously heightened cinephilic pleasure.

We’re getting a new kitchen in December

Throughout December the builders will be in to fit our new kitchen. We will still have a Soups and Sharing Platters menu and the bar will be open as usual but as the kitchen will be closed Cinebites is going to take a month’s break. Find out more here, including details of the schedule of work. Thank you for your patience in advance.

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