Get Ready for Mayhem

Mayhem Film Festival returns to Broadway Cinema this October, and the full line-up has now been announced!

Screening independent British and World film alongside Hollywood blockbusters and classic cinema retrospectives, Broadway is one of the UK’s leading independent cinemas attracting thousands of visitors each year to its four-screen cinema, café bar and meeting, workshop, and office spaces. It is also home to the Mayhem Film Festival, which is dedicated to cult, sci-fi and horror films.

Mayhem Film Festival is a cutting-edge event bringing you the very best in genre cinema and television. From premieres, new releases and previews to cult classics, breakthrough shorts, midnight movies, masterclasses, live experiments and more - Mayhem offers a unique and exciting viewing experience for audiences across four days. With a number of UK premieres, archive screenings and even live music, fans of cult, sci-fi and horror from around the world are in for a treat when the curtains go up!

The 2022 Festival

The festival begins on Thursday 13 October with low-budget British werewolf film Wolf Manor, and they are delighted to welcome Director Dominic Brunt and star Rupert Proctor to the Mayhem stage for a post-screening Q&A. The opening night finishes with a screening of Dario Argento’s latest giallo Dark Glasses - his first film in ten years - in which a blind sex worker is left responsible for an orphaned boy as a serial killer attempts to hunt them down.

On Friday 14 October, Mayhem delves into the archives for a rare screening of The Appointment, the Edward Woodward-starring supernatural shocker from 1982, and then it’s time to get your coat hangers ready for the dive-bombing birds of Birdemic 3: Sea Eagle. A UK premiere, this third and final instalment in the Birdemic franchise features an ecological message alongside those long, long, walks on the beach.

You will continue into the evening with Quentin Dupiex’s cracked-sitcom, sci-fi tale Incredible But True, as a couple look for the home of their dreams and come across a house with a surprising selling point in its basement.

Finish Friday with the critically acclaimed Mexican supernatural body horror Huesera, in which a mother discovers that the miracle of pregnancy isn’t all that she dreamed of.

Saturday’s line-up starts with an ultra-violent, bloody clash between teddy bears and unicorns in animated fantasy Unicorn Wars, and continues with Eddie Marsan and Raffiella Chapman in sci-fi adventure Vesper, as a 13-year old fends for her injured father and fights for survival amongst a collapsed ecosystem.

The festival continues into the evening with the always popular Mayhem Short Film Showcase, with the best new horror talent from across the world on the big screen.

We then take a feline turn with BFI Film Audience Network (BFI FAN) supported, ‘Night of the Cat’. Supported by National Lottery and BFI Film Audience Network, ‘Night of the Cat’ one of four special commissions by leading horror film festivals around the UK, will take over Broadway’s purr-fect Screen 1 with two rare film screenings Kaneto Shindo’s 1968 Japanese horror film Kuroneko (translated as The Black Cat) will open the night and will be accompanied by a kaleidoscopic live original score from Nottingham-based artist Yumah (aka Lucy Morrow). Then in Mayhem’s late-night cult slot, a 30^th anniversary screening of Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers from 1992 will continue the cat theme into the night.

They're starting off the final day of the festival with Freaks Out, from Mayhem favourite Gabriele Mainetti. A genre-defying take on the superhero film, Freaks Out pits a group of bizarre circus performers against the Nazis that have captured their mentor.

You’ll then move on to the UK premiere of Jethica - a smart, deadpan ghost story that twists the crazed stalker genre on its head.

Director Andy Mitten, who had great success at Mayhem 2018 with The Witch in the Window, returns with The Harbinger, an ambitiously scary film set during lockdown where isolation leads to very bad dreams that are starting to spread.

No Looking Back is another violent, action-packed and whiplash-fast film from the makers of huge Mayhem hit Why Don’t You Just Die! 

The final film of Mayhem 2022 is the scary and stylish Watcher starring Maika Monroe (the star of It Follows) as a young American woman who suspects the man watching her from across the building is a serial killer, decapitating local women.

If you still haven’t got your passes, then we’re pleased to announce that a limited number of full festival passes are still on sale for £85, and individual tickets will be available from Wednesday 14^th September.

Frankenstein ticket packages will also be available on this date for £35. The Frankenstein ticket package is exclusively available at the Broadway box office and allows you to build your own film festival with any five films for £35.

Visit broadway.org.uk/mayhem2022 to find out more and book all passes and tickets.

In past years

Past guests and events have included a screening of Don’t Look Now in the Gothic surroundings of St. Mary’s Church, Nottingham, with director Nicolas Roeg in attendance, a masterclass with director Gareth Edwards (Monsters, Godzilla), special interviews with directors Mike Hodges (Get Carter, Black Rainbow), Robin Hardy (The Wicker Man), and a special archive presentation and interview with Mark Gatiss (The League of Gentleman, Sherlock, Doctor Who). Other unique events have included a screening of Tod Browning’s silent classic The Unknown with a specially composed original live score by 8mm Orchestra, and a panel from the cast and creators of hit BBC TV series Being Human.

---

This blog was provided by Broadway Cinema, and edited by Katherine Taylor, Marketing Executive at Visit Nottinghamshire.