Forthcoming events

A couple of fantastic looking events are coming up which I'm too far away to get to, but I wanted to highlight them in case any of you are nearby:

The first is the premiere of Peerifool, a fairy tale film made by the Chagford Filmaking Group (I've written about their brilliant work bringing British fairy tales to the big screen before here). The premiere takes place on Sunday 28th March at Exeter Picturehouse at 12noon and you can buy tickets online.



The tale of Peerifool is available to read online here.

The second is a Marina Warner lecture 'Dark Arts: Magic and Strangers after The Arabian Nights' at Queen Mary University of London on Tuesday 30th March:

'Enchanters in The Arabian Nights are frequently outsiders, infidels who worship fire and command djinns who disobeyed God; in many of the tales, the magicians come from Persia or Africa, or some other elsewhere depicted as faraway and exotic. Marina Warner will explore how these representations combined with a European desire to distance western culture from its tradition of magical thinking, and - in the writings of Voltaire and William Beckford, for example - offered fertile proxies for conveying the enduring fascination - and uses - of enchantment.'

This is Warner's second public lecture as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University. The podcast of her first 'Figures in the Carpet: Magic and the 1001 Nights' is available here.