The Brattle is excited to team-up with three noted authors to co-curate this series of magical movies: Peter Bebergal, Pam Grossman, and Janaka Stucky. Each will contribute their own introductions and illuminations for films during the series and we kick off the program with a panel featuring a conversation between the three on Friday, Jan 27. This series explores images of the occult in cinema – mostly dealing with the Western traditions of witchcraft and ritual magic – from 1950s (NIGHT OF THE DEMON, BELL BOOK & CANDLE) to today (THE WITCH, THE LOVE WITCH).

Closing night will be a feature Alejandro Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain, with a live introduction by Janaka Stucky, followed by A Field In England.

Janaka Stucky is an American poet, performer, and publisher. The founding editor of Black Ocean, as well as the annual poetry journal, Handsome, he is also the author of a few poetry collections. His poems have appeared in such journals as Denver Quarterly, Fence and North American Review, and his articles have been published by The Huffington Post and The Poetry Foundation. He is a two-time National Haiku Champion and in 2010 he was voted “Boston’s Best Poet” in The Boston Phoenix.

In 2015, Jack White’s Third Man Records launched a new publishing imprint, Third Man Books, and chose Janaka’s full-length poetry collection, The Truth Is We Are Perfect, as their inaugural title. Janaka’s poems are at once incantatory, mystic, and epigrammatic. His esoteric & occult influences, combined with a mesmeric approach to performance, create an almost ecstatic presence on stage.