The Calgary Cinematheque is pleased to present, in collaboration with CUFF, Nobuhiko Obayahshi's cult horror classic, House.

How to describe Nobuhiko Obayahshi's 1977 movie House? As a psychedelic ghost tale? A stream-of-consciousness bedtime story? An episode of Scooby Doo as directed by Dario Argento? Any of the above will do for this hallucinatory head trip about a schoolgirl who travels with six classmates to her ailing aunt's creaky country home, only to come face to face with evil spirits, bloodthirsty pianos, and a demonic housecat. Too absurd to be genuinely terrifying, yet too nightmarish to be merely comic, House seems like it was beamed to Earth from another planet. Or perhaps the mind of a child: the director fashioned the script after the eccentric musings of his eleven-year-old daughter, then employed all the tricks in his analog arsenal (mattes, animation, and collage) to make them a visually astonishing, raucous reality. Never before released in Canada or the United States, and a bona fide cult classic in the making, House is one of the most exciting genre discoveries in years.

Nobuhiko Obayashi was a pioneering figure of 1960s Japanese experimental cinema who later made visually striking feature films and commercials. Born in Onomichi, Hiroshima, in 1938, Obayashi obtained an 8mm film camera during his childhood, and started creating his own films. After moving to Tokyo, his self-produced films were shown mainly in artist's studios, halls, and universities became highly acclaimed among journalists. His first 16mm film, The Person Who Ate (1963) won the Jury Prize at the Belgian International Experimental Film Festival. Around this time, he started participating in the first stages of the TV commercial era, using many foreign stars, such as Charles Bronson for Mandam, Sophia Loren, and Catherine Deneuve. Hausu was his first feature film; he has since produced dozens of feature films and over 2,000 commercials.