Third Eye Film Festival is getting ready to do it all again from May 27th to May 28th in New Orleans, LA at Bar Redux Nola! If you are in the New Orleans area please be sure to check the festival out!
The Third Eye Film Festival is the love child of founders Namrata Desai and Darian Brenner. They created the festival in order to showcase films with themes of fantasy, horror, occult and mysticism and to support the work of female filmmakers in these genres. We can tell you from first hand experience that they succeeded in achieving those objectives!
For this episode, we chose six short films from their December 2016, three day programing, which featured a magical practitioner and/or a supernatural/occult theme. The short films are:
Entering the Flesh Again
Written, directed, produced, & edited by Namrata Desai
Cinematography by Darian Brenner and starring Marian Rose, Michael Fleming, Dylan McDonough.
“A woman emerges into a dreamlike landscape, where a charming stranger triggers memories from her soul’s past. She seeks a new beginning, realizing it can only come from her ending. "Entering the Flesh Again" explores the parallels between reincarnation and the transience of relationships.”
The film begins with the triskele symbol also known as the triskelion. The word triskele has a Greek origin and means three legs. The triskele is an ancient Neolithic symbol that appears in many early cultures including among others, Malta, Greece, Sicily, and Ireland. It appears on the Newgrange kerbstones which date from approximately 3200 BC. The symbol is also used by other European countries such as Britain, Germany and Sicily. In the case of Sicily, the symbol probably dates back to when the island was a colony of ancient Greece. The triskele features prominently in ancient and modern Celtic art. One theory, is that for the ancient Celts, it represented various trinities such as life-death-rebirth, earth-water-sky, spiritual-physical-celestial and past-present-future. Another theory is that it represented reincarnation as the triskele symbol is made of one continuous line.
Reincarnation is a central theme of Entering the Flesh Again and is believed to have been an important aspect of ancient Celtic spirituality and the stories about their heroes. It also is an important tenet of Hinduism.
Color symbolism is also featured in the film particularly in the clothing worn by the main protagonist. You can read more about the meanings of various colors here.
The film features an Irish fairy tree and Ali Isaac Storyteller has a great article about these special trees.
“Fearful villagers gather at the bedside of a woman nearing labour as they prepare for the presence of a sinister creature. Set in the Philippines, TIK-TIK is based off of a popular creature in Filipino folklore, known as the Aswang."
The Aswang called a Tik-Tik in the film is a combination vampire and shapeshifter. "The Filipino Vampire - The Aswang Phenomenon" is a Discovery channel documentary that explores the myth. Here is an article on "The Aswang Vampire Demon of the Phillipines".
The film features a Hilot healer who is called in to serve as a midwife for a delivering mother. Hilot is an ancient Filipino art of healing. To learn more about this healing art take a look at "Hilot: Tradition and Science".
Behind the scenes, the crew had a creepy problem with some of the equipment during filming, which kept happening at the threshold of the bedroom, as they crossed under the opening of the attic. The camera’s stabilizer would fail, and images would flash across the screen. Did they call in a tik-tik? Take a look at their behind the scenes video and decide for yourself!
GIFTED
Captained, written, directed & edited by Stephanie Twyford Baldwin. Cinematography by Stephanie Twyford Baldwin. The film is produced by Part Time Hooligan starring Stephanie Twyford Baldwin, Ryan Rigley & Melissa Rocha.
“In this Part Time Hooligan dark comedy, a young and powerful witch must face an unwelcome visitor.”As per the director, the film was directly inspired by the movie The Craft. For a complete review of The Craft, be sure to check out Episode 12 of our show. The characters in Gifted visit a "shadow realm" which is based on the Japanese anime Yu-Gi-Oh!.
In the episode, we speak about how some pagans believe in the existence of other realms that exist separate from the mundane world. For example, in Norse mythology, there are the Nine Worlds and in Celtic mythology there was the Otherworld.
IN THE CARDS (A VERY DRAMATIC FILM)
Written by Jaime Lubin, directed by Kalista Tazlin, and starring Jaime Lubin, Kalista Tazlin & Jesse Cord Weber.
“A young woman seeks the help of a psychic after having doubts about her relationship with her much wealthier fiancé. But her visit to the clairvoyant's shop brings forth a dark presence, altering her life - and those around her - forever.”
In this Huffington Post article, the director Kalista Tazlin goes into some of the background of the film.
"In the Cards" features a character named Cassandra who is a tarot card reader. In Greek mythology, Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam of Troy who had the powers of prophecy. You can read more about Cassandra in Greek Mythology here. Cassandra also had a hero's cult in Lakonia.
The tarot deck featured in the film is the Rider Waite Smith deck created by occultist Arthur Edward Waite in collaboration with illustrator Pamela Colman Smith (a/k/a Pixie). You can read more about Ms. Colman Smith in the article "Pamela Colman Smith, the Forgotten Artist Behind Your Tarot Cards". Sacred Texts also has a free copy of A.E. Waite's "The Pictoral Key to the Tarot" which is the book that Waite wrote to accompany the deck. We also mention the creepy Sola Busca tarot. For the scoop on this unsettling early Renaissance deck, check out this episode of Gordon White's Rune Soup with Michael M. Hughes.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WITCHING HOUR
Directed by Tavarna Caris Garvey and starring Tasmin Leona.
“A spellbinding journey into the mind of an insomniac, who spends each night haunted by strange and wonderful illusions from another world.”
The film delves into the altered states of an insomniac and Carl Jung's themes of the collective unconscious, dream interpretation, and archetypes come to mind.
The young woman also meets with her shadow side during her nightly travels and the importance of embracing your shadow self is highlighted. She also enters the Otherworld of the fairies and encounters a fairy feast triggering a sort of Stendhal syndrome.
The film also explores the connection between dream, sleep and death which is seen in ancient Greek mythology (Nyx, Thanatos, Hypnos and Erebos). It turns out that a certain amount of dreaming each night is actually good for you and it is not good to be sleep or dream deprived.
The Other Side of The Witching Hour also has parallels to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland books.
THE STRANGE CASE OF EMILY GREY
Directed by Luigi Pairisi. Starring Francesca Palmas, Martine Brochard, Massimo Palazzini, & Vittorio Aparo.
“Following a seance gone wrong, famous medium Emily Gray chases out the door the clumsy followers who formed the chain with her (the seance) "you are not professionals, you are scoundrels!!" she shouts. But the spirit that was contacted was not a benevolent entity and soon Emily will be attacked."
This short horror film features a spirit board with the symbols "JHS" which most likely refers to J.H. Singer, a game company that created and manufactured a planchette game board in 1893 called the Mystic Wander.
Banishing spirits that we call up intentionally or unintentionally is extremely important or they will wreck havoc with our lives! There are many herbs that can help with protection from spirits and can also help you banish them. Magical rings have been used for protection going back to classical antiquity. Too bad Emily treated her pentacle ring so disrespectfully, it could have offered her some measure of protection!
So farewell now to all you lovely seekers! Be sure to join us on our next episode and follow us on Twitter and Instagram where we are @thewytchfiles and The Wytch Files on Facebook.
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