Described by Spike Lee as ‘one of the most underappreciated filmmakers of his time’, African-American playwright turned actor-writer-director Bill Gunn’s radical 1973 vampire movie Ganja & Hess returns as part of our ongoing Rio Forever celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the cinema in its current form. The screening will be preceded by a contextualising introduction from author and curator Ashley Clark alongside British filmmaker and Rio patron Dionne Edwards.

Featuring Night of the Living Dead’s Duane Jones in his only other lead role, the film offers a witty, racially charged take on the vampire myth as a well-to-do Black anthropologist, busy researching an ancient African nation where blood-drinking was common practice, is stabbed with a ritual dagger and transformed into an immortal vampire himself.

Filmed on a miscroscopic budget and featuring an array of experimental film techniques including dream sequences, off-kilter camerawork and non-sequential editing, the film was overlooked for decades only to be rediscovered and championed by filmmakers and enthusiasts including Spike Lee, who would go on to remake the film in 2014 under the title Da Sweet Blood of Jesus. 

We’re pleased to welcome Ashley Clark online from New York: the Curatorial Director at Criterion and the author of The World of Black Film: A Journey Through Cinematic Blackness in 100 Films (on sale at the Rio!), he’ll be discussing Gunn’s masterpiece with local filmmaker Dionne Edwards, who’ll host the screening in person.