Kier-La Janisse

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched is the first feature-length documentary on the history of folk horror, exploring the phenomenon from its beginnings through a trilogy of films – Michael Reeves’s Witchfinder General (1968), Piers Haggard’s Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973); and on through its proliferation on British television in the 1970s and its culturally specific manifestations in American, Asian, Australian, and European horror, to the genre’s revival over the past decade. Touching on over 200 films and featuring over 50 interviewees, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched investigates the many ways that we alternately celebrate, conceal, and manipulate our own histories in an attempt to find spiritual resonance in our surroundings.

documentary film, 194′, still frame, courtesy of author and Severin Films

Kier-La Janisse is a film script writer, programmer, publisher, producer, and founder of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies. She is the author of A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (2007) and House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (2012) and has served as editor of several books, including Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015) and Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror on Film and Television (2017). She was a producer on Mike Malloy’s Eurocrime: the Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the ’70s (2012), Sean Hogan’s We Always Find Ourselves in the Sea (2017), Mike McKinlay’s Tights Worship: The Processes of THE RITA (2019) and David Gregory’s Tales of the Uncanny (2020). She is currently co-editing an anthology book on the films of Robert Downey, Sr. and writing a monograph about Monte Hellman’s Cockfighter, as well as developing an animated film based on Julia Gfrörer’s graphic novel Vision. A house editor and producer of bonus features at Severin Films, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched is her first film as director.

For more on her work see: kierlajanisse.com. To watch the film see: woodlandsdarkanddaysbewitched.com.

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EKO 9 Eyes in the Stone is part of project EMPACT | Empathy & Sustainability, co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.