Sarahfest hosted its first-ever Folk Horror Film Festival Oct. 23-24. The event included screenings of “She Will,” “Midsommar” and “The Witch,” alongside a senior thesis and visual effects workshops.
Sarahfest brings together students, faculty and locals to celebrate creativity, community and art. The annual tradition for the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies presents an exciting opportunity for community-building within the Oxford and University of Mississippi art scenes. The Folk Horror Film Festival is the organization’s first fall-themed event.
“Sarahfest has been going on for a little over a decade,” Theresa Starkey, associate director of the Sarah Isom Center, said. “(This year,) we partnered with (the Department of Theatre and Film) and Em Stransky, (a new faculty member) who is leading the workshop. … The film department helped us choose the three films that we’re doing.”
Stransky is an assistant professor of costume and makeup design. Leslie DeLassus is an associate professor of film and gender studies at the university, who noted the appeal of the folk horror genre.
“Folk horror is an interesting subgenre … about nature becoming supernatural or demonic,” DeLassus said. “It emphasizes things that are beautiful and nostalgic and terrifying.”
The first night of the film festival commenced first with a screening of “Oath,” a senior thesis film by 2025 B.F.A in film alumna Zoe Frassinelli. Well-acted and highly unsettling, “Oath” was followed by the night’s feature presentation, “She Will,” a film with compelling visual ideas and a potentially rewarding revenge story that ultimately falls flat due to sloppy editing and an overly safe conclusion.
Saturday’s matinee presentation went for an undeniable hit with an A24 favorite in Ari Aster’s “Midsommar.” The bleak and uneasy revenge narrative played to scattered applause on Saturday afternoon. The costume and market department held a folk-horror-themed makeup workshop afterwards.
“(Stransky) reached out to me after a design meeting for a show, where I had incorporated some folklore elements into my own makeup design,” Maddie Grenn, a senior theatre arts major from Hattiesburg, Miss., said. “They asked if I wanted to be an assistant for this, and I helped put the kits together.”
Sophia Corzo, a sophomore film production major from Ocean Springs, Miss., modeled for the demonstration.
“I have these mushrooms, flowers and beautiful horns on my face done by the great Em (Stransky) and Maddie Kren. Lots of latex on my face, but it’s cool,” Corzo said. “I’ve had scar wax, never this much prosthetics, but I love it.”
The festival closed with Robert Eggers’ 2015 debut “The Witch,” a grotesque but absorbing dark folktale about a Puritan family of settlers in New England.
Starkey also encouraged those curious about the theme for this year’s festival to take a trip to the Depot to see Kaleena Stasiak’s art installation during its last week. The “HEX” exhibit displays a series of relief prints that reimagine the roles of women within folk stories through a feminist lens.
“What you’ll begin to see is that (Sarahfest is) about collaboration and partnership, and what people on campus can do when they come together to create moments for students,” Starkey said.
