Misc
Inside the Live Scoring of Häxan: An Interview with The Flushing Remonstrance at Brooklyn Horror Film Festival
If I ever needed more proof that Brooklyn Horror Film Festival was the place to be in October, my experience at this year’s live screening of Häxan with The Flushing Remonstrance was that.
The Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg is the primary home for the festival, and the host to what feels like a million different screenings. Each film feels like an outpouring of a director’s vision, of a cast and crew’s hard work over months, or even years. But one screening in particular among the repertory options on offer caught my eye, and that was Häxan. Part historical analysis, part horror, and part drama, there aren’t many films like this silent feature from Benjamin Christensen. And certainly, there are very few like it in terms of its age and impact: the movie is over a century old and still manages to grasp the intrigue, imagination, and emotion of audiences today.
But it was what was attached to the film that really intrigued me. Because this particular screening of Häxan was being played with a live accompaniment. I didn’t know what to expect from a group called The Flushing Remonstrance; frankly, I didn’t even know what to expect from a soundtrack accompanying a century old film as unique as Häxan. A set of percussion machines and a keyboard set were set up at the foot of the theatre screen, and soon two musicians approached them: Catherine Cramer and Robert Kennedy, the duo that makes up The Flushing Remonstrance.
The theatre dims, and the soft glow that comes off the lights illuminating their instruments becomes pronounced. The duo’s work blends into the film seamlessly. Their music is introspective, emotionally fine-tuned, and sonically bonded to what’s happening on screen with a level of smoothness I didn’t expect. There was a clear interplay at work between the film and the live score, and I knew then that I had to ask them how they did it. The Flushing Remonstrance was kind enough to entertain the question and spoke with us here at Horror Press about their process and history.
The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and conciseness.
An Interview With The Flushing Remonstrance on the Art of Live Scoring a 100+ Year Old Film
Luis Pomales-Diaz: So. Why exactly did you name yourselves The Flushing Remonstrance? I don’t want to assume you represent the Quakers, but… the name does raise questions.
Robert Kennedy: We were both working at a museum in Flushing, Queens, when we met. We got together for what we thought would be a one-off show. We would be live scoring vintage cartoons in a park. So, we needed a name, and after the usual process where we came up with a bunch of jokey names that would never fly, we landed on The Flushing Remonstrance.
Mainly because of geographical proximity, and it always sounded kind of ’60s like Jefferson Airplane. It wasn’t a particular political statement, although what the document represented and what they were doing, speaking truth to power, does resonate with us. We claim no representation of Quakers.
Tell us about your musical background. How does it factor into your live performances scoring films?
Catherine Cramer: We get asked a lot, almost every show, ‘how do you do this?’ and ‘is this a composed score or is this entirely improvised?’ And I find it interesting, because I spent the bulk of my musical career playing jazz, and I ask people if they know how that works first.
There’s the chart, a melody that can be written down, but then the bulk of what jazz musicians do varies from performance to performance. Who knows how many iterations of Autumn Leaves there have even been, but they all have their own measure of changes and improvisations.
Robert: We’ve been playing together for ten years, and we bring our improvisational ability and sensibility to [live scores] as our own thing. We’ve almost always played in the context of accompanying a film or a short film. If we hit something while we’re in rehearsal, we’ll run with it. But we don’t have written melodic content like a jazz quartet. Maybe like five percent of our material is identified pitches or chords, and those are primarily to ensure that Catherine’s percussion has a number of sounds that have tonal components, and that we produce either a consonant or dissonant effect.
The best way to describe it is: we are improvised, but we have defined the structure for a given film very precisely. As far as what sorts of sounds and feelings and what sorts of timing will accompany different sections and scenes of a film, it’s definite.
An excerpt from the Flushing Remonstrance live score for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
And when you’re determining those feelings, that framework, what’s the process you go through? How many times do you watch the film through?
Robert: It’s somewhat of an automatic process at this point. We identify a film we want to play, we watch it through (separately, usually), and sort of chart out the architecture of it, almost like a storyboard. Scene by scene, where the scene is taking place, and what’s happening.
We then run the film together, and let the film guide our decisions when we rehearse. And whatever the filmmaker is suggesting to us, that’s what we do. Some films we’ve had to slave over a little bit more, sometimes, we’re particularly satisfied with the first go through. We have a great deal of instrumental rapport that factors into it, and we do it in a way that feels natural to us. So sometimes it comes easily.
Catherine: When we first run through a new film, like with Häxan, there’s a lot of stopping and going back, trying variations of the same scene. Each time through, we change or add something new. And even with the film we’ve played the most, Nosferatu, it’s always different. People come up who have seen us before to tell us our performance had a completely different feeling. It keeps the performances very alive in a sense, even when the film is somewhere around 100 years old.
What causes the variation between screenings of a film like Nosferatu that makes it so different each time, even after a decade of playing the film? What keeps changing, and why?
Catherine: No matter how many times we’ve played Nosferatu, there’s been a continual change. Sometimes it’s an instrumental change. On the Roland Octapad, the instrument that I play, there are a hundred different patches, and in each patch there are eight pads, and in each pad there’s up to as many as four sounds depending on where you hit it. Not including the volume and how you balance the sounds. And that causes radical changes in itself.
How we react to the film emotionally has changed a lot since the very beginning. We watch these films intently, and they guide us not just when we’re coming up with the framework. It guides us when we’re playing. We’re not just playing along but really bonding the music to the film. The last time we played it, it felt more sparse, more haunting.
And playing Nosferatu now, what emotions do you play to the most? What stands out to you more now than when you first started?
Catherine: With Nosferatu…it’s so sad. Nosferatu is a film I see as pathetic, in the truest sense of the word pathos. Orlok is such a tragic figure, and that sense has only grown each time we play it. In certain moments, when the man is walking down the middle of the street reading off the names of the dead during the plague, and every moment when Ellen is sitting by the ocean waiting for her husband to come home, all of the imagery strikes me so much more deeply. It’s those feelings that I’ve tried to accentuate.
Does the audience’s feelings factor into the performance to an extent?
Robert:The feel of the space, the sound of the room, but especially the feel of the crowd, are vital to how these performances keep changing. When we played Todd Browning’s The Unknown and Dali’s Un Chien Andalou in early November of last year, obviously, the presidential election had happened. Any audience we were playing for had that circulating in their head.
There were high emotions and clouded minds, and it was palpable. We brought into it an anger and intensity to a certain extent, because we were putting our own state of mind and our audience’s state of mind into it. Disorientation, paranoia, gloom, it made its way into the music. That’s how it is with improvised music often, you hear more traditional jazz, and you can tell when someone is having a bad night or if they’re sick. You’re not immune to being influenced by outside forces, and in our case, we lean into those outside forces.
A segment of the Flushing Remonstrance’s Nosferatu live score.
As musicians, you have about as many tools as filmmakers when it comes to communicating emotions through your music. Sometimes you even have more, depending on your instruments. Which emotions on film are the most challenging to communicate through your music?
Robert: I think a particular challenge is if there is a sustained scene of intensity. Sustained scenes of violence, a riot, a mob fleeing like in Metropolis. The end of The Phantom of the Opera is another great example, when they’re chasing him through the streets of Paris. The obvious approach is to pile it on, get really loud and clangorous. But after a while, it gets tiring for us and for the audience. You can’t put more water in a full glass. Those are the most challenging, assuring there’s a sense of dynamism while retaining that kinetic feeling. The goal is to maintain the integrity of the film we’re working with.
Catherine: The hardest for me are the spots where there is no emotion. In Nosferatu, we have this scene where the longshoremen are preparing the ship, we have a man reading off a list, men moving boxes, but really not much is happening. You can’t just have it be silent! It’s not until they dump out the dirt and the rats come out that you have something to do. But you can’t leave that dead air, which is hard to fill out. Playing to emotion isn’t necessarily easy because you want to do it well, but it’s the in between parts that get me. And silent films need to have in between parts because you can’t just have constant exposition.
Robert: I immediately thought of the Spanish language version of Dracula we did last year at Brooklyn Horror. There are these long drawing room scenes where they’re sort of just…talking. And like…well, there’s only so much we can do. And that film has a lot of it! (laughs) But then you also have very active characters like that version’s Renfield, who is really just chewing the scenery.
Oh, I truly love Pablo Alvarez Rubio as Renfield. He’s my favorite Renfield. The definitive one for me, I’d love to see what you play for him.
Robert: You know, I have to put in a vote for Tom Waits in Francis Ford Coppola’s version. Beyond the freakishness, he plays so well, there’s this sadness and desperation, being aware he’s a prisoner to Dracula, that’s great. On that note though, there is one thing we do the same every single time when we play Nosferatu.
After Orlok dies in the sunlight, it cuts to Knock in his cell looking out the bars, and he says, ‘The master is dead!’ And we always go to silence, every time. Because the death isn’t the climax, the climax is the aftermath. The spell has been broken, and the sacrifice Lucy has made for this guy…who in like, none of the films, really deserves it! And the silence punctuates that.
The Flushing Remonstrance original score for the Guy Maddin short Blue Mountains Mystery Séance.
For Häxan in particular, you do have quite a few scenes that are high intensity, and high emotion. The film is effectively a witchhunter’s manual, with all the historical cruelty that implies towards the women who are accused witches.
Robert: Absolutely! It’s based at least in part on the Malleus Maleficarum, an actual witchhunter’s manual.
It also has some generally raucous scenes of the witches. The black sabbath in the woods for instance. It’s an easy out to compose something quick and aggressive for that sequence. How did you determine what you wanted to do for that?
Catherine: It’s not an easy film to accompany. There are protracted scenes of torture, scenes of the accused women being interrogated and psychologically beaten down. One of the hardest there is the scene of the priest trying to force the young woman to use magic, to agree to show him so she can see her child again. It’s intense, but there’s subtlety you have to play for.
Robert: You know when that particular scene comes along, you’d think because of the nature of it you’d expect it to call for a big Rite of Spring, grand guignol, kind of raucous sound. But you have to break down where a scene starts and what it is. When it begins, we start with people sitting on a hilltop, and they see the witches flying off to the woods, and then you get the scene of the witches flying over the town. There’s not really fear or aggression in that, but rather mystery and a bit of wonder. So, we play towards that.
Then they get to the woods, and it begins, and that mass the witches start up is at its core a ritual. The question at the heart of it is ‘what sounds like ritual music?’, so we aim for something ritualistic. Someone’s instinct might be to play something like Carmina Burana, but it’s just not interesting. It’s obvious. It isn’t in the interest of the film or our interest to make it noisy or heavy or Stravinsky-esque, because that’s just not what the film is going for.
Häxan is over 100 years old. Though it has the indelible place in horror history, the story it tells and its cinematography, do feel very divorced from modern filmmaking. Is there an emotional disconnect from the way it’s presented that makes putting together the framework you work off of difficult?
Catherine: It’s a fun challenge, and a very different kind of challenge. It’s like a PhD dissertation turned into a film, which is not even factoring in the temporal quality that makes it so different on its own. It’s a shocking film, beyond the content but also shocking in the historicity of it and the sheer number of people killed and tortured in the name of stopping witches. Between 35 and 60 thousand dead. Like really? How many people died for this?
Then there’s also the fact that he brings in contemporary feminism into the film is fascinating, and tragic. Things are somewhat different a century later, but we’ve not completely moved past which is sad.
The film in its last quarter is agonizing. The dialogue it has on the concept of hysteria, and modern psychological medicine as opposed to contemporary notions of psychology…
Robert: I mean the fact that they call it hysteria tells you quite a bit…
Yeah, It’s not great. Interesting, compelling, but flawed in some ways.
Robert: In terms of trying to score a film that’s that old…we try our hardest not to let it change what we do. We take each film on its own level and try to be inspired by it. But we deliberately try not to make any attempt to emulate the music of the period. We avoid idioms, we try to avoid period music because it would be silly just trying because we are primarily using electronic instruments. Whenever it’s possible, it’s just us and the film.
The Flushing Remonstrance plays a live score for the Guy Maddin short “Saint, Devil, Woman”, part of his installation art piece Seances.
How has your approach to live scoring films affected your experience while watching film?
Catherine: I think my history with film itself influences it. I did film studies at NYU, then I worked for Millennium Film Archive for a while, which was a really fabulous place on East 4th Street that preserved avant-garde films. Then I was a film editor for about six years. All that to say, I’ve always been very conscious of the sound in films. I orient more to listening for that. Starting with the sound more than I’m seeing picture wise.
Robert: I come to it from a similar place. My background is a lot of audio production for records. Mix and loudness are key factors, and I can’t turn it off. If a score is too busy or feels cliché or gets in the way of the film, I just can’t ignore it.
Are there any films in particular that you would specifically like to live score in the future?
Robert: Absolutely. We luckily have a good long running relationship with Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, and the yearly festival theme guides us on what we’re doing next year. There’s been a lot of enthusiasm in us reviving our accompaniment to F.W. Murnau’s Faust, but this time with a completely different sound. We won’t retain anything from before, we haven’t played it since 2018, so this will be entirely new. It will have a bit of resonance with Häxan we suspect. There’s a Scandinavian film called The Phantom Carriage that has been on my short list as a film I’ve wanted to play for a long, long time.
We also love working directly with directors. We’ve been very fortunate to work with the filmmaker Guy Maddin, who makes contemporary films that are like silent films. Given our repertoire, we go together very well, and we’re very fortunate to have linked with a living filmmaker. We recently scored two very early Clive Barker films this past summer, one of which has never had a score. We contacted him, and he gave us his blessing. All that said, there’s not a formal list, but we know which films work with how our process and our style work, and we are excited to play them.
Catherine: I always look forward to working with contemporary working filmmakers. And because of our background in avant-garde film, we’ve also been approached to score contemporary short films, and that’s been fun. There are so many different opportunities we’d like to score for. It’s New York, there’s always stuff happening.
Robert: And if you are a contemporary filmmaker who thinks your film would benefit from the sonic ministrations of a group like ours, get in touch with us!
A big thanks once more to The Flushing Remonstrance, who took the time to talk with us. You can follow their ongoings and adventures in live scoring on Instagram. A special thanks also to Brooklyn Horror Film Festival for connecting us.
And finally, thank you for taking the time to read this. Remember to stay tuned to Horror Press (@horrorpressllc on Twitter and Instagram, @horrorpress.com on Bluesky) for more interviews with creatives in the horror space, and for all news horrors!
From October 16 to 25, horror fans, filmmakers, writers, and artists gathered in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for ten days of film screenings, panels, live podcast recordings, Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies lectures, an artisans’ market, networking opportunities, and parties. It was Brooklyn Horror Film Festival’s milestone 10-year anniversary. While there were, of course, first-timers in attendance, the majority, it seemed, have been going to the Festival for years—a testament to not only the expertise of the organizers and programmers, but to their dedication to the horror community as well.
How Brooklyn Horror Film Festival Began
Justin Timms, Founder and Festival Director, created Brooklyn Horror Film Festival in 2016. At the time, he had been working as an editor and post supervisor, bouncing back and forth between FilmRise and a video production company that made internal videos for major companies, like Pepsi. BHFF was initially intended to be a side project to satisfy his lifelong interest in the horror genre.
“I’ve always been into horror. They’ve always been the movies that I wanted to see,” he said. “The types of movies that I love weren’t playing festivals in New York, so I just had this crazy idea that I could start a film festival.”
So, that’s exactly what he did. One of the first people to join the team was Director of Programming Matt Barone. He and Timms followed each other on Twitter, and when Timms posted about the festival, Barone, whose love of horror began when his father showed him Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein when he was six or seven years old, reached out. Barone had been writing about music, reviewing horror films, and covering film festivals for a number of years, and was interested in pursuing a path in festival programming. Since this was BHFF’s debut on the scene, he took on the task of reaching out to filmmakers to create the festival lineup. That first year, BHFF opened with Dearest Sister by Laotian filmmaker Mattie Do, closed with Child Eater by Erlingur Thororddsen, and also featured We Are The Flesh by Emiliano Rocha Minter as the centerpiece film and Without Name by Lorcan Finnegan and Garret Shanley, which won the Festival’s award for Best Cinematography.
Pictured above, Tori Potenza and Joseph Hernandez. Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Horror Film Festival
A Decade of Growth and an Expanding Programming Vision
Ten years in, BHFF has grown exponentially, from a weekend-long stretch of screenings to a fully-formed film festival spread over ten days. It’s also established a reputation of excellence and receives hundreds of submissions each year, requiring a team of screeners in addition to programmers. Programming a film festival is a major responsibility—one that Senior Programmer and Director of Community Development Joseph Hernandez takes very seriously.
“You are a curator that has a huge influence on filmmakers that are seen or not seen, films that that are being recommended and placed in the public eye,” Hernandez said. “You have a true power in guiding trends, [including] which kinds of filmmakers are being represented in the overall landscape. [It’s a] huge, huge responsibility that I don’t take lightly.”
From Early Horror Fans to Key Festival Programmers
Like Barone, Hernandez has been with the Festival since the beginning. He had been working with the Tribeca Film Festival on the theater operation side of things and wanted to shift to a more film-focused role. A horror fan since his preteen years through Goosebumps books and Scooby Doo (with early childhood exposure to classics like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th that led to “a recurring Freddy Krueger nightmare”), reaching out to Timms to get involved with Brooklyn Horror Film Festival seemed like the perfect starting-off point. That first year, he was a screener and also introduced films, moderated Q&As, and helped with venue management. After that, he was promoted to programmer.
“As I learned what the role truly entailed, I was able to grow this whole [new] appreciation for what film festivals do and what their function truly is,” he said. “You get to see firsthand the difference that you’re making. You see how excited and happy [the filmmakers] are. You see all these audience members coming up to them and praising their work. I think a lot of filmmaking is behind closed doors, and it can be a very lonely experience. [For some, this is] their first opportunity of not just showing their work, but also being able to take that victory lap, when they get to finally put that movie in front of an audience. What we do is life changing for a lot of artists, and that makes a lot of the work and sleepless nights so much more worth it.”
Pictured above, NYC horror icon, Xero Gravity, and film critic/playwright Sharai Bohannon. Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Horror Film Festival
How Programming Shapes Filmmakers and the Genre
Hernandez is also an actor and filmmaker, and says that his experience as a programmer has helped him grow creatively.
“The best thing that any young filmmaker can do is watch as many films as possible. It could be bad films; it could be good films. You’re going to learn something from every viewing,” he said. “You’re developing those film analysis muscles that really help you to pick apart why something works in a film and why it doesn’t. It’s such a great classroom. I watch like, 1,000 movies a year for Brooklyn, and that just keeps me growing and sharpening those muscles and tools.”
Curating a Diverse and Audience Focused Horror Lineup
Of the actual process of programming, Hernandez stresses the importance of building a program for a wide audience.
“Each film you select doesn’t have to be something that is going to be unanimously liked, but there should be films in your program for every kind of viewer. This goes back to our responsibility as programmers. You have to be selfless. You can’t build a program just to your tastes.”
Hernandez notes that one of the Festival’s objectives is to demonstrate how vast the spectrum of horror is. If you ask him, it’s the key to bringing more people in.
“I think it’s very easy for someone to say, ‘Oh, I don’t like horror’, while their idea of horror is just a gory slasher film. That is a misperception that I blame on the marketing of the ’80s, when we had that huge slasher sequel boom, and that just became the mainstream definition of what a horror film was,” he said. He cites Silence of the Lambs as a case study on how this narrow definition of horror has led to mainstream audiences misunderstanding what horror is. “Horror doesn’t even have to be scary. Horror could be funny, it can be psychological, it could be so many things. We try to show that within our program, and that’s kind of what gave birth to our Head Trip section. These are films that are very much on the margins, but do fall into the Venn diagram. I think that’s another way that we can help the horror genre to survive and persevere: by showing that it encompasses so much more, and getting rid of that narrow stigma.”
Representation, Inclusivity, and Marginalized Voices in Horror
Beyond honoring the full scope of the genre, representation and inclusivity are always top priorities at BHFF. It’s reflected in not only the consistently diverse lineup, but in highlighted sections, like this year’s spotlight on Black horror and the annual “Slayed” block for LGBTQ+ short films. Nearly 50% of this year’s program was also woman-directed.
“There’s so much horror coming out nowadays because it’s having a big resurgence, which is awesome, but we’re getting so many prequels and reboots and requels,” writer, film critic, and programmer Tori Potenza said. “There are just so many great indie films out there coming from marginalized voices [so it’s] really important to highlight [them]. It feels like [the Festival has] always been ahead of the curve there.”
Championing Diversity, Queer Voices, and Inclusive Horror
It’s a sentiment shared by Hernandez, as well as by writer and emcee Xero Gravity, who is also deeply involved in BHFF:
“Everything else around us changes, and this is the little pocket that we have that stays consistent,” she said. “Something that I love about Brooklyn Horror is that we’re very adamant about queer liberation and giving queer voices their own spot, [and] there was also a slate specifically for Black horror. There’s a lot of pandering in the outside world, and [maybe] 5% of it is genuine. But this is something that’s very consistent with with Brooklyn Horror—these people just fucking get it, and that’s the great thing about having an intersectional community. When I’m up there introducing films or doing Q&As, I look into the audience and I see an array of people. I see white people, I see Black people, I see disabled people, I see queer people scattered amongst the audience. [BHFF] really recognizes the diversity of their audience and don’t use that as a pandering, but [instead] use that as ‘Okay, these are the people who we have in seats, and we should make sure that they feel welcome.’”
Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
Filmmakers Share Their Incredible Experiences
Of course, BHFF isn’t just exciting for fans—it’s also thrilling for filmmakers, especially if they’re presenting work. Filmmakers Jasmine Osean Thomas and Ksusha Genenfeld came this year because their short film, Candy, was selected for the “Home Invasion” shorts block. This was the first time that Thomas, the writer and director, came to the Festival; it was the second time for Genenfeld, the cinematographer.
“I’d been following Brooklyn horror for a while because I know the quality of work that they support is unbelievable and very diverse,” Thomas said. “When I got in, it was like fireworks. I’m a die-hard horror fan. I’ve been since I was a little kid. So to get into something like this, where the genre is so celebrated, and to be amongst my people was so great. The work at this festival is just a different quality and caliber that should be celebrated forever. I’m just so honored to be part of this. And beyond that, the way that the festival supports filmmakers locally, but also brings in filmmakers, like to the Women In Horror networking event, sets it apart from any other film festival I’ve been to. It’s about community, it’s about horror, and it’s about celebrating not just your own film, but everyone else’s films.”
“I feel like it’s always the best time ever. I always meet new people and new filmmakers, so it’s always exciting to come back and be here,” Genenfeld added.
More Than Just Horror: Lectures, Parties, Markets, and Live Events Too
BHFF doesn’t only feature films, though. In addition to the scheduled screenings, there are also always additional events, like academic lectures held with Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, parties, live podcast recordings, and this year, an artisans’ market.
“It can’t just be all about the movies,” Hernandez said. “We need to provide a variety of events and activities to diversify our offerings. You can get burnt out if you’re just going from movie to movie to movie, but if you’re buffering in between, doing something completely different, that’s a lot of fun. Then you can catch your second wind and go see another movie. It really helps the whole festival experience. We never aspire to be a screening series. We want it to be a full-fledged festival.”
Creating Dedicated Spaces for Women and Queer Horror Fans
In recent years, one of the events has been a mixer for women in the horror community, spearheaded by Potenza and Caryn Coleman, the founder of the organization The Future of Film Is Female. Potenza recalls that the realization that a women-specific event came when she was in the middle of a conversation with another woman during a BHFF happy hour, and a man interrupted them to “explain” the monstrous feminine.
“That felt like a really big sign that we needed our own space—women and queer folk outside of the cis, straight, male-dominated space,” Potenza said. She teamed up with Coleman, and they started to organize happy hours and meetups in the off-festival season.
“Once the festival came, it seemed like a really easy way to add in an event specifically for this particular population of genre fans that clearly love it and attend. The programming staff here seemed down to do it. [There are] so many women and queer folks that are filmmakers and writers or just fans, and we all just hang out. The energy that comes off of that many women and queer folks in one space…I think we could rule the world if we harness that energy for a specific use.”
The Future of Film Is Female and Its Connection to Brooklyn Horror Film Festival
Coleman created The Future of Film Is Female in 2018 as an off-shoot of the Nitehawk Shorts Festival, which she had started in 2013.
“It was born out of all the relationships that I had with the shorts filmmakers from that, of all genders, and particularly out of the 2016 election,” she said. “We opened the 2016 Shorts Festival the day after the election, thinking that it was going to go a very different way. I thought about my position as a film programmer and what I could do to help get marginalized voices heard and seen.”
Coleman also launched a biannual The Future of Film Is Female film series at MoMA, and in 2022, co-curated a 10-week horror film series at MoMA called “Messaging the Monstrous” with Ron Magliosi and Brittany Shaw.
“It was the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she said. “My whole life was a 10-week horror series that looked at horror films made from 1960 forward, with the premise that horror has meaning. So we did 10 one-week subgenres ranging from eco horror to Women Make Horror to slashers, unpacking the damage or the success that slashers have done in the horror genre. And we had guests come. It was about 115 films in total, features and some short films.”
Coleman’s Role at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival
Coleman has been involved with Brooklyn Horror Film Festival for years. She’s been a jurist, a programmer…and was instrumental in bringing the Festival to Nitehawk because at the time, she was Nitehawk’s Director of Programming.
“I’ve known Justin [Timms] for a while, so there’s always been a little bit of crossover,” she said. “Two years ago, I was a programmer for the Festival, and then, with Tori thinking about how to gather the troops in terms of women in horror, and how to create more of a community space for them, both for the festival and then outside of the festival, because I do a lot of horror programming outside of Brooklyn—horror all year round!—and how we can continue to be together and supportive, but also just celebrate films together. That’s the best part about seeing movies: talking about them before and afterwards.”
Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
How Nitehawk Williamsburg Became BHFF’s Home Base
There’s no shortage of audience togetherness at Brooklyn Horror Film Festival. Everyone interviewed for this article had nothing but glowing accolades for the way that this organization has fostered a strong sense of community among horror fans and creators. One of the ways this is achieved is surprisingly simple: having the Festival centralized in one location. The first Brooklyn Horror Film Festival was spread across multiple venues. Now, thanks to Coleman, it’s held at Nitehawk Williamsburg, an intimate triplex with a lobby bar, as well as a bar on the lower level called Lo-Res.
“The fact that we get to fully be here at Nitehawk is the dream,” Barone said. “This is where you can build a community. People can hang out, have drinks, and talk. It used to be [where] you [had] to see a movie [and] get on a train [to] see the next movie. We’ve evolved now to where we can just do it in one central area [and] neighborhood. It’s the ideal setup.”
A Festival That Feels Like Family
Toby Poser and Zelda Adams, two members of the iconic Adams Family filmmaking team, returned to Brooklyn Horror Film Festival this year to present their latest feature, Mother of Flies. In previous years, their films Hellbender and Where the Devil Roams screened at the Festival. Matriarch Poser says that the venue helps to encourage intimacy and community.
“We have the bar downstair and the bar-slash-lobby upstairs with all the great physical media. It’s like a big horror hug the minute you walk in,” she said. “And it’s so because of this intimacy that you meet everyone, you talk, and it’s just a beautiful thing.”
Adams, Poser’s daughter and co-writer, co-director, and co-star of Mother of Flies (along with John Adams, her father/Poser’s husband), was also excited to return to Festival, especially because of the sense of community at BHFF.
“After our first [time] submitting our film and luckily getting in, we experienced the fantastic community here,” she said. “Everyone loves horror so much and is so supportive, too. And it’s such an intimate theater, so it feels like a special viewing experience. The Q&As are also really kind and exciting, too, and the events they host with Brooklyn Horror are fantastic as well. It’s really great bringing Mother of Flies to the festival today, because I feel like we’ve cultivated even more of a community, and it’s nice because people get to come to the same theater and see how our films have changed so much since our first film here, and maybe how our story has changed and how we’ve grown as filmmakers.”
A Sound Designer’s Love Letter to the Horror Community
Another artist who revels in the community atmosphere of BHFF is sound designer Genna Edwards. She first came to the Festival in 2023 for the premiere of Cannibal Mukbang, which she worked on with writer-director Aimee Kuge, who also serves as BHFF’s Communication’s Manager.
“That was my first time at this festival, and it rocked my fucking world,” Edwards said. “I had never experienced such love and joy. You’re just in a room constantly with other horror freaks. I feel like people who aren’t in the community kind of look at us in a weird way, but when you’re in a room with all these folks who understand what all of this means, it’s just different, and I felt that instantly. Every year, I try to be here because it’s the best and they also program incredible work.”
Year Round Horror Events That Strengthen Community
A major thing that sets Brooklyn Horror apart from other film festivals is that it expands beyond a yearly event, and has become a central knot within the New York City horror community. Hernandez is largely to thank for that. In addition to programming the Festival, he regularly organizes advance screenings for new horror films, always followed by casual get-togethers at nearby bars to talk about the film, make friends, and network.
“I love what we do with the Festival. That is our main event of the year, but I quickly realized that a year in between editions is way too long, and community building is so important to what has gotten Brooklyn Horror to be what it is. There’s no reason why we need to limit that to one week a year,” he said. “So I really wanted to start providing stuff year round to keep the community engaged with each other, to keep it growing. At this point, it’s just been partnering with different studios to get early screenings of new horror films, and then after the screenings, just designate a place where everyone can meet afterwards and talk and catch up with each other, pick apart the film, talk about what’s going on in their lives, and just providing a safe space for the community to look forward to once or twice a month and stay connected.”
Why BHFF Is One of the Warmest Communities in Horror
Genenfeld described the horror community, particularly when it comes to BHFF, as “the warmest community in the film industry.”
“Everyone’s just so welcoming and everybody is really excited to connect, which I feel like is not very often seen,” she said. “So that’s really special about this festival.”
Having a community is vital, no matter who you are or what you’re interested in. For people interested in horror—something that is still misunderstood, maligned, and stigmatized—having a community of likeminded people can be a lifeline. New York has always had horror fans and horror-related events, but according to Barone and Hernandez, there hadn’t really been a solid, consistent community until Brooklyn Horror. BHFF and the off-season events—which have plenty of crossover with The Future of Film Is Female—have facilitated countless friendships and collaborations, not only strengthening the horror community as a whole, but empowering and affirming fans, artists, and writers on an individual level. For Hernandez, it’s helped him become more confident and comfortable going out and meeting people.
Brooklyn Horror Film Festival’s Impact on Creativity and Collaboration
For Edwards (and many others), the Festival has been a game changer both socially and professionally.
“You wait all your life to find people who care about the same things you do, especially if those things aren’t normal or socially acceptable, and then I came to this festival, and there were a bunch of other people who were like, ‘Yo, I want to see a decapitation on film. The nastier the better!’ I can finally be myself here and be as out about all of this stuff as I want to be—and people don’t look at you like a freak. They just accept you. And then we all make work together. I’ve worked on so many films with a bunch of the people in this community, and it only seems to keep happening, which I’m so freaking grateful for.”
Pictured above, the crew behind BHFF! Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
Brooklyn Horror Film Festival Returns in 2026
At the time of this writing, Brooklyn Horror Film Festival is already hosting an off-season event—an advance screening of Sisu: Road to Revenge with a meet-up at a bar called The High Note. The festival run may have ended, but the organization operates year-round. It fills a need for horror fans. Not just the need for the latest films, but the greater need for solidarity, community, and friendship.
The horror genre may be awash with blood, guts, family tension, psychological distress, aliens, monsters, and human depravity. But the horror community? That’s all heart.
Brooklyn Horror Film Festival will return to Nitehawk Cinema October 15 – 22, 2026 ! Early bird discounts are now available for film badges and film submissions!
Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, the Holiday season has REALLY kicked off. We’ve covered our fair share of Holiday horror from underappreciated gems like Christmas Bloody Christmas and Dial Code Santa Claus to Black Christmas and Krampus! In the hopes of spreading some Holiday cheer (and fear!), the curator of all things Horror Press, James-Michael, has decided to bring the cloven-foot killer that is Krampus into your homes! But this isn’t your ordinary Krampus…this Krampus is chock full of special features and gift wrapped in 4K!
If you haven’t seen Krampus, then what are you doing with your life? For those unfamiliar, Krampus follows a large family gathering of frustrating people who all get snowed in three days before Christmas. One by one, the family gets picked off by Christmas-themed creatures. Sometimes, the holidays truly are killer.
Enter Our Holiday Giveaway!
How to Enter:
Step 1. Make sure to FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM!
Step 2. LIKE the giveaway post!
Step 3. TAG A FRIEND who you think Krampus should visit!
The winner will be announced on Monday, December 15th and notified via direct message. If the winner does not respond within 24 hours, we’ll randomly select another winner.
WHAT YOU’LL WIN
What’s included in Krampus: The Naughty Cut? Let’s unwrap it and look:
- Audio commentary with director/co-writer Michael Dougherty, and co-writers Todd Casey and Zach Shields
- NEW interviews with Michael Dougherty, Visual Effects Artist Richard Taylor, Actors Allison Tolman, David Koechner and Emjay Anthony, Co-Writer/Co-Producer Todd Casey and more…
- Alternate ending
- Deleted/extended scenes
- Gag reel
- Krampus Comes Alive! – Five-part featurette including Dougherty’s Vision, The Naughty Ones: Meet the Cast, Krampus and his Minions, Practical Danger, and Inside the Snowglobe: Production Design
- Behind the scenes at WETA Workshop: Krampus
- And more!
So head over to our Instagram, follow our account, like our giveaway post, and tag a friend who you think Krampus should go visit!
Good luck!
**Giveaway entries are limited to addresses in the United States.**
**All entries must be 18 or older to enter**
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