By: Petra Chase, Arts & Culture Editor
On a dark and stormy night, horror enthusiasts packed the Vancouver Public Library’s (VPL) inspiration lab. Doaa Magdy is the founder of Vancouver’s first BIPOC horror film festival, Horror in Seconds. Magdy led a workshop open for the public to create 60-second horror films, and the turnout was tremendous. Magdy introduces herself as “Jordan Peele’s future competition,” referring to the Black filmmaker known for his iconic horror and poignant racial commentary film, Get Out. She has the same enthusiastic assurance in others’ abilities to be amazing horror filmmakers, and told everyone they’d walk out of the session having made a 60-second film. By the end of the workshop, there was a mini film screening of spine-chilling and comedic clips shot by the participants around VPL that proved it.
Horror in Seconds, with its first annual events happening November 22–26 around Vancouver, is geared toward BIPOC filmmakers. Magdy’s mission is to decolonize horror, a genre which has traditionally underrepresented and tokenized marginalized identities.
“From my own experience as a Black person, it means, for example, not making the Black person die first,” she said, chatting with me after the event. Decolonizing horror means “sharing our stories from our own perspective. It means making the horror genre accessible to us.” There is no application fee, the process is straightforward and simple, and the only equipment needed to participate is a phone.
Magdy praised free public workshops like this one for further removing barriers, saying, “People leave feeling like ‘yeah, I’m a filmmaker.’ Boom. The most important part is having fun.”
Submissions “must be 60 seconds or less, shot on a smartphone and with no dialogue.” 60-second films can be edited on Instagram or TikTok, and this allows many people to participate, so different perspectives can be platformed. Short clips are also “mindful of folks with lower attention spans” and having no dialogue allows people who are deaf or hard of hearing to have the same viewing experience.
We watched a few 60-second muted clips from horror movies to see how suspenseful short clips can be, because there’s more context that’s left up to your imagination.
“[Horror] could be a very relatable experience for folks that experience some form of discrimination for being different, or outcast. This is a genre where people can unite and share their experiences,” Magdy said. People of diverse ages and backgrounds turned up, brought together by a love of horror. Horror “tackles sociopolitical issues that are very current by using different metaphors.”
Horror in Seconds’ theme this year is holidays, and that can range from Christmas to Ramadan to International Yoga Day. As long as there’s a horror spin, Magdy encourages people to be wacky and creative. They shared a short film they made that imagined what a film would look like if it were directed by her cats. She also joked about her favourite horror tropes: “Characters following the noise. Why do you always follow the noise? If I hear a noise, I’m not going there.” Horror can be hilarious!
Halloween doesn’t need to end when November starts. Magdy encourages you to hold onto your Halloween costumes an extra month to wear them to the festival. It will include screenings, live performances, a Halloween burlesque show, and a horror-themed DJ dance party.
In the meantime, here are some of Magdy’s film recommendations: Talk to Me (2022) is a horror thriller about friends conjuring spirits, which Horror in Seconds is screening with Vancouver Black Library on Halloween. She also recommends Horror Noire (2021), a compilation of six films by Black directors. Finally, XX (2017) is an anthology of four short horror films written and directed by women. She noted how horror has many subgenres, and how indie horror was a motivation for the festival, because “low budget doesn’t mean low quality.”
There will be a festival teaser on October 30 at VPL featuring a discussion on the filmmaking process and clips of footage they have prepared for the festival. The Talk to Me movie night screening will take place at Vancouver Black Library on Halloween, October 31. Follow Horror in Seconds on instagram at @horrorinseconds, and check out the event page for more information on what’s to come. Consider donating to their fundraiser via gofundme.
