“Enter here all who welcome sitting in the dark without hope,” reads the sign. It may sound uninviting but it turns out that film lovers are happy to do just that. Los Angeles-based non-profit American Cinematheque has expanded its Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair series beyond Hollywood, where it began in 2022, to seven additional locations across the US and internationally to London.

Bleak Week, which showcases films several shades right of noir (but left of horror) was born in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. “We felt that there was a generation of children watching Marvel movies who wanted more,” says Grant Moninger, American Cinematheque’s artistic director. “There are so many films selling spectacle, beauty and fantasy. But when we put this out there, people got it. It touched on more universal truths.”

More than 100 films will be shown across 10 theatres (American Cinematheque itself runs three across Los Angeles), ranging from the utterly brutal Behind the Door, a 1919 silent war drama from foundational Hollywood producer Thomas Ince and director Irvin Willat; to the plaintive, though less harrowing, Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt. The programme highlights great filmmaking that is raw – oftentimes ugly – and whose hard-to-watch nature means that its artistic merit is frequently overlooked. “There is something about an uncompromising approach to showing the dark side of human existence that becomes great art,” says Chris LeMaire, the organisation’s senior film programmer. “These are great films that resonate powerfully with audiences.”

As part of the festival’s expansion, London’s Prince Charles Cinema will be taking part for the first time this year. “As filmgoers and cinephiles, we’re drawn to [darker themes] at some point,” says Paul Vickery, Prince Charles Cinema’s head of programming. “We get to step into a world that we never want to be in.” Guest hosts will include The Brutalist filmmakers, Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold, who will be speaking before a showing of Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia; director John Hillcoat, who will present his gritty outback western, The Proposition; and The Northman auteur Robert Eggers, who will introduce Andrzej Zulawski’s The Devil. Bleak Week’s exploration of the underdog also includes animation and, of course, the classic heart wrencher, Watership Down. Each theatre is given free rein on which movies to show and the only rule is no documentaries.

Spoiler alert: there are no happy endings in bleak cinema. “There are rarely happy beginnings or happy middles,” says Vickery. But as Bleak Week attests, that’s not always what we want. “Personally, I find it appealing to lock myself in a dark room with people and sit through a moment that I hope I never have to actually experience,” he says. If the art of cinema imitates life, then what does our eagerness to consume such grim tales say? Instead of looking for a fairytale outcome, the relentless brutality of Bleak Week is a reassuring wake-up call.
bleakweek.com