Scary Saturday Shorts

Dispatches From The Underground

I know I have already spoken of my deep seated love and admiration for the works of Montreal filmmaker Karim Hussain elsewhere on The October Country and I'm not likely to stop anytime soon. It's just that, well dear readers, I happen to think that he is one of thee most exciting horror movie makers toiling away at the margins of the genre right now. Period. When he isn't directing gorgeously disturbing cinema as with 2000's Subconscious Cruelty, whose twisted world of sex, mutilation and sacrilege was like nothing I had ever experienced before (or experienced since), he's collaborating with the likes of Spain's Nacho Cerdà on 2006's Fulci-esque fever dream The Abandoned (which he co-wrote) or Jason Eisener's recent Hobo With a Shotgun (for which he was the film's cinematographer). His output in feature length material certainly doesn't match that of his brothers and sisters currently working within the field, but he has managed to make his presence felt almost yearly in other forms of media (namely shorts) with his decidedly unique vision that consistently dares to trespass where the sacred and the profane become one.

So because we love him and simply put, we just can't get enough of his kaleidoscopicly colorful, twisted worlds, today we are offering up Hussain's brilliant short film from 2002, the Claude Jutra Award nominated The City Without Windows (aka La Dernière Voix). Co-directed and written with with Hussain's frequent producer Julien Fonfrede (Ascension, The Beautiful Beast), City's story unfolds in a dreamlike, bizarre future that has replaced our own. A future where one day, unrelenting acidic rain begins to fall and never stops. But that is just the beginning of the nightmare...



For more about The City Without Windows, Offscreen has a very in-depth interview with the film's directors on the making of the film. Worth a look for those interested in digging into the meat of this startling vision.