Vampire Ball: Live Violin, Cocktails + The Hunger (18)

You are cordially invited to Fruits on Film's inaugural vampire ball: expect live violin, cocktails, cupcakes, and Tony Scott's iconic film The Hunger (1983).

Blood-thirsty cocktails will flow in the Atrium bar as you mingle among fellow creatures of the night. As dusk gives way to darkness, Amirah de Bourg will open the evening, performing a haunting selection of violin pieces to set the mood as you sink your teeth into delicious cupcakes made by Mise-en-Crème. Fruits on Film curator Anna Lily Dean (she/her) will then set the fruity, fangtacular scene, introducing The Hunger before the lights go down.

Vampiric couture is very much encouraged, dress like you're gonna live forever!

Tickets for this event are £19 for members (restricted to 2 per member, so you can bring a guest for the same price), and £21 for non-members. Tickets include access to the Vampire Ball and live violin music, 1 complimentary cupcake and a free Bloody Cocktail (with a non-alcoholic option available), as well as an allocated seat for the film.

Event timings:

18:30  Drinks, Cupcakes & Violin music sessions in the Atrium Bar

20:45 Introduction + screening of The Hunger 

22:35  Expected finish

About The Hunger:

Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie and Susan Sarandon star in Scott's erotic supernatural thriller, a love triangle that bridges life and death, love and hunger. Miriam (Deneuve), a five-thousand-year-old vampire, promises her lovers eternal life, but when her cellist companion John (Bowie) begins to age overnight, he seeks help from Dr. Sarah Roberts (Sarandon), a researcher into the mechanisms of aging and the secrets to immortality.

A note from the Fruits on Film curators:

Decades on, Scott's film is an entirely fresh take on one of cinema’s most popular genres. Lesbian vampires were (and remain) a trope of trashy, prurient horror, but the sapphic scenes in The Hunger are delicate and sensual, its queer characters rich and flawed. The vampire legend here takes on a new, alluring resonance: these vampires are less gothic than straight-up goth, wearing leather jackets and gathering at Bauhaus gigs. It's their neat dagger pendants that draw their victims' blood, not fangs. No references are made to garlic, bats or invisible reflections, and the word 'vampire' is never spoken. Even more than other films in the genre, The Hunger has a heightened, macabre preoccupation with physicality and decay; cold, gruesome scenes from Dr Roberts' research facility undermine the seemingly effete, unmarred nature of immortal life.

The film's queer resonance was ahead of its time. Released in 1983, well before HIV/AIDS became prominent in the wider public consciousness, it nevertheless invites chilling parallels in hindsight, when Bowie's character ages rapidly and is dismissed by doctors as a hypochondriac. The more likely metaphor here is addiction and intravenous drug use, the dream/nightmare dichotomy of life lived in the shadow of your own hunger: the moment when desire becomes dependency. Amid the film's delirious, sensory delights and playful eroticism, the realities of flesh and blood are inescapable.

The Hunger leaves us repeatedly tantalised. The past lives of its ancient vampire protagonists are seen only in glimpses and fragments, and erotic and violent possibilities are dangled and teased long before they're finally delivered.

 

Content warnings:

Strong violence (including simulated animal death), strong sex, nudity, strong language and outdated language.

About Amirah de Bourg:

Amirah de Bourg (she/her) is a queer Caribbean classical violinist and violist with an extensive musical background spanning orchestra, choir, and international touring.

About Mise-en-Crème:

Mise-en-Crème is an amateur baker specialising in novelty cakes and bakes for film clubs and screenings in London.

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