Alan Smithee's Cinema Verite Presents GHOSTWATCH

6PM – Doors open

Ghostwatch was first broadcast in 1992 on Halloween night at 9pm on BBC 1. On the surface a relatively straightforward haunted house story, what set Ghostwatch apart was its format. Presented as a live broadcast over 90 minutes audiences were drawn into a very real feeling paranormal investigation. Long before other horror mocumentary or found footage films like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity made this type of story telling commonplace, Ghostwatch felt real, perhaps too real…

So effective was this broadcast that BBC was flooded with concerned callers who apparently believed in the events of the show. The realism of Ghostwatch had gotten well and truly under the nations skin and even 20 years and hundreds of imitations later its easy to see why.

Never having been repeated on the BBC since we are honored to bring back the Ghostwatch team and ‘pipes’ for one more Halloween scare.

The Speaker:

For our post screening Q&A we are delighted to have Ghostwatch Director Leslie Manning join us. Leslie started her filmmaking career at Bristol Arts College before going on to train at the NFTS as a director.

As well as directing Ghostwatch Leslie directed My Sisterwife for BBC Screen Two and the 2011 feature film Leila.

The Venue:

Our Venue for this event is the appropriately spooky Morpeth Arms. We will be screening in the Spy Room, a seemingly cozy living room environment that hides the pubs haunted secret. In the cellar of the pub is a corridor of Victorian holding cells which are rumored to be haunted by the inmates of the Millbank Prison.

Prisoners would be left in this confined space before being deported to Australia (giving birth to the slang POM – Prisoner of Millbank) and with outbreaks of scurvy and cholera not all came out alive.

After the screening we invite you to step into the cellar with our Paranormal Investigator Jamie Alexander who will host a Séance in an attempt to make contact with the spirits of the incarcerated inmates on All Hallows' Eve. Will you be brave enough to attend?