Häxan: The Esoteric Cut
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Information
Running Time: 115 Minutes
Genre: Documentary, Horror, History
Starring: Benjamin Christensen, Ella La Cour, Emmy Schønfeld, Kate Fabian, Oscar Stribolt, Wilhelmine Henriksen
Pre-screening Talk with Jez Conolly
6:45pm – The Peatyards, Haddo House
Seating: Unreserved
There are limited spaces for the pre-screening talk and we recommend booking early to avoid disappointment. If you attend the talk, a seat will be reserved for you in the Hall for the film screening.
Before the screening, join us for a special introduction to one of the strangest, most influential, and most visually astonishing films ever made. Released in 1922, Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan is one of the defining works of early horror cinema.
Exploring the film’s production and Christensen’s fascinating career. We’ll also look at Häxan’s place within the golden age of silent cinema, a period when filmmakers had developed an extraordinarily sophisticated visual language, much of which was curtailed by the technical limitations that came with the arrival of sound
Discover why Häxan remains one of the most daring films ever made, and why, more than a hundred years after its premiere, it continues to fascinate, disturb and inspire audiences and filmmakers alike.
Jez Conolly holds an MA in Film Studies and International Cinema.
He is the author of The Thing and co-author of Dead of Night in the Liverpool University Press ‘Devil’s Advocates’ book series, and also co-author of Seconds in LUP’s ‘Constellations’ series.
He has contributed chapters to The Routledge Companion to Folk Horror, Horrifying Children: Hauntology and the Legacy of Children’s Television published by Bloomsbury, and Midnight Movie Monographs: Bride of Frankenstein from PS Publishing.
His latest book ‘Capture Spiral’, published in March 2026, is an autoethnography exploring memories of his 1970s childhood, including the many visits to the cinema that his father managed, and staying up late to watch the Saturday night horror double bills shown on BBC2 in that decade.
Around the time of the book’s release, he was chosen to be one of the Locals in the Limelight at the annual Granite Noir literature festival in Aberdeen, at which he read his poem ‘The Witch’s Hat’.
The pre-screening talk will be followed by the screening of Häxan: The Esoteric Cut, which will be screened in the Hall at Haddo House.
