SPECIAL HALLOWEEN FILM SERIES: 'SUBJUGATED BODIES'

Cineteca celebrates Halloween with a programme curated by Alberto Sedano, exploring female bodily tensions through two newly restored gems of Spanish fantaterror. La endemoniada (Demon Witch Child, 1975), directed by Amando de Ossorio, is Spain's unique response to The Exorcist phenomenon. An elderly Romani woman accused of kidnapping a newborn dies by suicide during interrogation after commending herself to the Devil. Her spirit then possesses the body of the local commissioner's daughter, unleashing a spiral of violence and revenge that turns the young girl's body into a battlefield between the sacred and the profane.

Las melancólicas (The Possessed, 1971), directed by Rafael Moreno Alba, is a horror drama starring Analía Gadé, Francisco Rabal, and Espartaco Santoni. The film follows Tania, a patient admitted to a mental asylum following the death of her mother, who had been subjected to an exorcism. Severely mutilated by Francoist censorship, two versions circulate: one for Spain and another, featuring nudity, for international audiences—a stark portrait of repression over the female mind and body.

Additionally, we premiere the restoration of Invasión travesti (2000), directed by Jerónimo de los Santos: a piece of Andalusian underground delirium where drag hordes have invaded the planet, and Laura Crawford—a lethal hybrid combining the worst of man and woman—has led humanity into chaos. Bárbara Furiasse, the last heterosexual woman on Earth, has three days to find "a real man" and escape. A hypnotic, bizarre piece of cinema that subverts gender codes with unprecedented ferocity.