ALL THEM WITCHES: INSPIRATIONS FOR LUX AETERNA SELECTED BY GASPAR NOÉ

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Gaspar Noé has never been shy about citing his cinematic inspirations—witness the spines-out stacks of influential books and VHS tapes visible in the opening of his 2018 Climax—but for the U.S. theatrical run of his 2019 Lux Æterna at Metrograph, Noé has gone the extra mile. While introducing American audiences to his cinematic psyche-out—and to its film-within-a-film, which concerns a witch burning—Noé has curated a program made up of the movies which provided kindling to fuel the flames of Lux Æterna, several of them united by the common themes of heresy and bonfires. A roaring blaze of big-screen blasphemy and redemption, with a roster that includes Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan: Witchcraft Throughout the Ages (1922), Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Day of Wrath (1943), Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General (1968), and a whole coven of Dark Arts-infused classics.