B EAST Magazine website

Text by Vijai

Jan 27, 2009

Like most of you, I had thought that the Taliban had a monopoly on gore films from the region, until I stumbled upon Islamabad-based Omar Ali Khan’s masterful ‘Zibahkhana’, Pakistan’s first horror film. Released in 1997, the landmark pulp flick is a Taliban-version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with a burqa-clad wearing serial killer chasing down five city slickers lost in the woods on their way to a rock concert. Set to Pakistani rock & dark, Bollywoodesque overtures, the slaughterhouse debut uses Pakistani’s already-creepy backgrounds and Jihadist cast of characters, and throws buckets of blood upon them, with body parts—courtesy of Lahore’s butcher shops—flying in every direction meanwhile. Think of all those Taliban videos of women being beaten for adultery, and children lopping off men’s heads, and then imagine those characters doused in blood & chasing terrified teens through a forest, similar in feel to those wild border regions where US drones drop bombs to snuff out Al-Qaeda operatives, and you get the picture.

Check out the trailer for the film here

Interestingly enough, the film’s 45 year old eloquent director, Omar Ali Khan, who studied in the States, runs a cult ice-cream parlor (inspired by an independent ice-cream outlet in Boston) in Islamabad called “Hotspot”. I-Scream, huh! Their innocuous ice-cream parlor is also a high temple to horror: it publishes its own horror magazine, Scream, and funds Omar Ali’s slaughterhouse ventures. Its entire interior is also postered wall to wall with cult B-film posters, and the soundtrack you bet would give even Freddie Kruger a sweet tooth. You can check out their brilliant website (http://www.thehotspotonline.com/hotspot/main.htm), which is also a trove of information on subcontinental horror/pulp/trash and other genres.

Thanks to Bangalorean writer Achal Prabhala for having turned me onto Lollywood horror.

- By Al Jackson

In a city gripped by recession tighter than most, precocious good-time guys are urging the youth of Budpest to get out, get happy and get partying.

Bence Meyeri, the brain behind Wacky Parties, who together with Andras Eichstaedt, Janos Prorok and Matyas Lendvai of serial party/production/DJ crew Sick As A Dog, have been throwing dynamic pop-up guerilla raves in the metro stations, underpasses, and abandoned buildings of Budapest for the past year.

The likely lads recently hosted iLLFEST, a libertine mid-January weekender who’s first night took place in the concourse of the Astoria metro station. Chosen precisely for the heavy footfall of Friday night revellers traversing busy Karoly Kut avenue, attention was guaranteed and the minimal tech-house pumping from a makeshift DJ booth of trellis tables and ironing boards outside a news kiosk managed to attract quite a crowd.

After a couple of hours, the 100-strong party halted as the power (jacked straight from an outlet in the wall) failed. Perplexed cops looked on while Plan B seamlessly clicked into action and the throng was whisked to a club where the tunes continued to spin.

Hitches and glitches though are simply par for the course for Bence and the boys. Indeed, they seem to revel in the off-the-cuff ethic of what they’re doing. Importantly, the party goers are all plugged-in to the same attitude too and are eager to be part of it.

It’s just as well ‘cos Saturday night’s installment, in a freezing underpass off Ferenciek Square next to Erzsebet Bridge, was hit-up by the riot squad. As tear gas brought an end to a party that, Budapest’s likely lads at the helm, was thriving on its ’stolen moments’ vibe, it was a case of grab a lap-top, korg or ironing board and leg it to the van a few streets away.

However, this being a more focused, recession-era, Budapest, the 200 souls who had been waiting for this all week, or had simply stumbled across it and liked what they saw, were defiant. They were not ready for the authorities to kill their weekend (in addition to their economy). Not even at two thirty in the morning.

Again, exit strategies were already in motion and iLLFEST rumbled on in the eclectic Tuzrakter Cultural Centre. The squat-like former school building an inspired choice to sustain the hi-NRG D.I.Y. fun and keep us hedonists drinking and dancing well into Sunday.

In these troubled times it’s heartening to see that Andras, Matyas, Janos, Bence and associates, are throwing down the gauntlet: underground in Budapest, it’s invention vs recession and it’s kicking off.

- post: Al Jackson

When was the last time you were set upon by beat-crazed gypsies intent on making you feel that the world isn’t shitty, that life isn’t one big fucking let-down, and actually get you smiling like a bloody idiot while jigging uncontrollably? For me it was about 4mins 54secs ago.

Many weird and wonderful things are stumbled upon when kerb-crawling the net but the video for I Was Drunk ft. Noze by tech-house sensation Riva Starr (real name Stefano Miele) certainly falls into the latter category. Well, maybe a little bit into the first one too but in a good way. It is total lunacy after all.

It’s a mash-up of Black Cat, White Cat, by controversial Serbian director Emir Kustarica and if you thought the film was an absurdist delight, just wait til you see it set to Miele’s infectious, hook-laden Balkan belter. Like the most joyously riotous, insane, crystal-meth induced shot-gun wedding homevideo ever. Watch it, watch it now.

Riva Starr’s album, If Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade is out on Made to Play in January 2010.