Programmed October 2024

Witches

From the eerie to the mystical to the glamorous, some of cinema’s most enchanting witches cast their spell in this satan’s brew of black magic and occult horror. Embodying cultural fears and fantasies around powerful women and the shadowy, forbidden flip side of the everyday patriarchal order, witches have captivated audiences almost since the beginning of filmmaking. In the silent era, the sui generis Häxan blended documentary and gothic horror to macabre effect, while the 1960s and ’70s cast witches as reflections of the counterculture in films like Rosemary’s Baby and The Girl on the Broomstick . More recently, movies like Sabrina the Teenage Witch and The Love Witch have made women who dabble in the dark arts symbols of pop empowerment, occupying their own space between the earthly and the supernatural and connecting ancient traditions to modern rituals.