How Not to Watch a Movie

Glasgow-based artist filmmaker Daniel Cockburn delivers a lecture-performance that explores the discovery of a very special superpower: “the ability to turn any film into a horror film simply by watching it.” Plunging down a cinephilic rabbit hole, How Not to Watch a Movie is a warped autobiographical journey spanning 1990s horror films, the Y2K crisis, a correspondence with a famous American director, and deep grammatical analysis of power-ballad lyrics. Mixing video clips and thought experiments in a deft, humorous show that’s brought comparisons to Spalding Gray and Charlie Kaufman, Cockburn considers misremembered films, missing the point and losing the plot.

“Smart and amusing” (Village Voice) | “Strange, recursive, and enthralling” (NOW Magazine) | “A funny and consistently surprising look at horror films, ambiguous language, and the perils of over-thinking everything” (Phil Concannon, philonfilm.net)

A co-production with the IMPAKT Foundation, in the context of the EMARE Residency Program, with research assistance from The Canada Council for the Arts.