PVTV Fringe Flicks: Surreal Short Films feat. Hotel Kalura at DoES Liverpool

Looking for something weird and wonderful this Halloween season? There are plenty of great horror movies showing across the north this October but Fringe Flicks offers something a little different. The quarterly short film series curated by People Versus TV promises a programme of surreal, absurd and experimental short cinema, providing audiences with a glimpse beyond the mainstream movie industry.

While the event on Friday 10 October isn’t specifically billed as Halloween themed, the inclusion of monster comedies, poetic hauntings and repurposed puppets in the line-up qualifies the evening as sufficiently spooky for us.

This time around the headline short film comes from award-winning UK animator Sophie Koko Gate. Her short Hotel Kalura was shortlisted for the 2023 Film London Jarman Award, and is set against a romantic Sicilian backdrop where we’re introduced to a “dazzling, humorous, and off-kilter exploration of desire and performance.”

The joy of PVTV’s project is that it is deeply rooted in Liverpool’s grassroots, DIY arts scene and yet it takes a purposefully international outlook.

Also on the bill is American animator Michael Granberry’s Les Bêtes, a stop-motion fantasy created using repurposed puppets and abandoned characters found in storage who have been given new life on screen. Granberry’s credits include Severance, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, and Adventure Time, while his directorial work harks back to the dark and lavish spirit of 1930s animation.

The joy of PVTV’s project is that it is deeply rooted in Liverpool’s grassroots, DIY arts scene and yet it takes a purposefully international outlook. That means an eclectic, surprising programme featuring over a dozen daring shorts that take us from the United Kingdom to the United States, Iran, Spain, France and Estonia before heading back to Liverpool with local filmmaker Paris James’ The Rime, set on the city’s docks.

As always at Fringe Flicks, entry is on a pay what you can basis, refreshments are available and audiences are encouraged to hang about after the films to share in informal conversation and the city’s growing indie cinema culture.