protean depravity

I'm a little bit crushed and inconsolable right now... February is the one month I am waiting for the whole year because of all the amazing film festivals, and this year I missed a big chunk of the biggest one, of the Berlinale, due to some personal issues combined with a health condition. So I ended up watching only three films. Not in a day, mind you, I'm talking about the whole duration of the festival... I watched them on the first and last day of the festival, before and after my sick dates. Quite some money on unused tickets and days from my annual leave burnt up; but it is the films I haven't been able to watch for which I mourne and I can't recover from. This year started so bad already, I hope I can stop crying some time and get over everything quickly.

A couple of months ago Caro had offered me a copy of Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror, edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams, to review for the Otherland Newsletter. Even though I was really anxious to read it and I knew I would eventually get my hands on it, I declined nevertheless, because it's 400 pages long and I didn't see myself finishing and reviewing it any time soon. It was then a surprise to find an audiobook edition at my local library, not only because it was available so quickly after the publication of the print book, but also because it is very seldom to find audiobooks of anthologies or short story collections in general. I put a hold on the audiobook edition and eventually had the chance to listen to it, which I'm SO glad to have done! In the printed text, each story is already of a very high quality level - I wouldn't expect it any other way with two gigantic names like Peele and Adams printed on the cover. I love a good au...

Hmm... I feel like I haven't reviewed books in ages and at times like that the books usually accumulate and the shorts section is lusher, but that's not the case this time. Interesting... Anyway, I have been watching a lot of movies, work was crazy, all the while I'm giving my book translation its finishing touches and I'm desperately trying to assemble the ikea couch my mom gifted me (more to herself, so she can sleep on it, lol) so that my living room doesn't look like a battlefield anymore. And tomorrow I'm starting my Berlinale marathon, so I'll probably not have more time to read. Still, I'm just a little bit proud of myself because I have been able to stick to my plan of mostly reading books I already own and not to buy new ones, which I have been able to do in January. I only bought one new book in the past month, which is an enormous show of discipline for me, I hope I can keep it up. So I have been able to cross a few titles off my list, and I h...

The 9th Edition of the Final Girl Berlin Film Festival, a film festival which showcases horror made by women*, has been on since last Wednesday and is ending tonight. As usual, my go-to section in this festival is the short film category and I was able to put together for myself an online-presence mixed schedule in order to be able to watch as many shorts as possible, plus one feature film. The shorts were divided into the festival's stable categories of Tech, Family, Queer, Close to Home, Folk Horror, Midnight Movies and Body Horror. I'm not one hundred percent sure but I think there were some new categories this time around, namely Workplace, Eco Horror, le Petit Mort and Absurd and Surreal Horror. I had a blast as usual, and here are my highlights of this year's festival.