Peter Strickland's 'new' film "Berberian Sound Studio" at NWFF: July 5 - 11

It's been a good year since the release of  Peter Strickland's "Berberian Sound Studio", but here we finally are with it getting a week long run at Northwest Film Forum come July! Strickland previously delivering one of the more curious new director offerings in SIFF 2010, that of his psychologically disturbed thriller "Katalin Varga". The director being no novice when it comes to soundwork and the more avant-leanings of Modernism's past, he sought out Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton for the soundtrack and engineering on the film and in the time since spent the last half-decade immersed in mid-Century improv, noise and modern composition. As explored in Sam Davies' excellent review in the pages of Sight & Sound, this making for a perfect primer of sorts for his homage to 70's Italian Horror and Giallo of the defining directors of the genre(s) Argento, Fulci, Crispino and Avati. Davies stating: "not since "The Conversation", has there been a film quite so centered on the psychology/pathology of the aural as in "Berberian Sound Studio" with a cover feature on Strickland in that month's issue, his passion for the above-mentioned eras in cinema and sonic adventuring thoroughly plumbed. The fruits of which are graphically evident in his new film which listens as a best-of of sorts of current British explorers in the 'Hauntological Pop' hinterlands. James Cargill of Broadcast supplying the soundtrack, with Julian House from the Ghost Box label creating the title sequence for the fictional film-within-the-film, brilliantly titled "The Equestrian Vortex".