Otherworldly forces and queer forebears are evoked in visually-dazzling, fantastical films by Andrew Meyer, Lloyd Reckord, Kenneth Anger and Sandra Lahire.

This special screening pays homage to both giants and underappreciated underground visionaries alike, with works that signal the possibilities for new types of image-making. 

In these films, imaginative, alternative worlds create space for marginalised identities to highlight and unpick repression. The super-rare An Early Clue to the New Direction, only recently rediscovered in the USA, stars important early gay-rights activist Prescott Townsend. Jamaican actor-director Lloyd Reckord’s Dream A40 is a Cocteau-like fantasy about gay repression and resistance on the road to Wales, made two years before the 1967 Sexual Offences Act. Finally, Kenneth Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome and Sandra Lahire’s Sylvia Plath-séance Lady Lazarus stimulate both the mind and the optic nerve with their dazzling, richly saturated 16mm colours and bold, occultist imagery.

Total running time 105min

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COMPETITION: Win 1x pair of tickets to Queer Ghosts and Spectral Presences at the BFI Southbank, at 14:20 on Saturday 10 June.

To enter the competition, send an email to player@run-riot.com with the correct answer in the ‘subject’ line. The winner will be randomly selected. 

Q. This collection of films includes the screening of Kenneth Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. The film takes the name "pleasure dome" from the atmospheric 1816 poem Kubla Khan. Who wrote Kubla Khan?

A: .1) William Wordsworth  .2) Charles Pierre Baudelaire .3) Thomas De Quincey .4) Samuel Taylor Coleridge