Screening of the documentary 'Boorman & The Devil' about John Boorman's 'Exorcist II: The Heretic', with commentary from Karyn Kusama, Mike Flanagan, Joe Dante and Simon Abrams.
Boorman & The Devil screens at the Midland Arts Centre (MAC) on Friday 30 October, a documentary directed by David Kittredge that takes the career of filmmaker John Boorman and runs it through the lens of one of his most notorious projects: Exorcist II: The Heretic.
If you're not familiar with the story, Exorcist II is one of those films that has lived in the footnotes of cinema history for decades, largely remembered as a critical and commercial failure. Kittredge uses that specific wreckage as a starting point to look at Boorman's wider body of work, weighing the film's poor reception against the way it changed the industry and the importance of taking risks in art. It's less a post-mortem of a single movie and more a study of a career that wasn't afraid to swing for the fences, even when it missed.
The documentary is told with commentary from surviving participants, alongside filmmakers and critics who can put the whole thing in perspective. Among them are Karyn Kusama, Mike Flanagan, Joe Dante and Simon Abrams, so you'll get a mix of voices from across the industry rather than just a single point of view. It's a good line-up of people to have talking through a film like this, especially since the documentary is as much about the process of making as it is about the result.
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It's rated 15, so keep that in mind if you're bringing anyone younger. The screening is at the MAC in Birmingham on Friday 30 October, and you can find tickets and times on their cinema page.
