A Way to Die: The Short Films of Coil (Phantoscope)

Phantoscope, Triskel’s quarterly experimental film event, presents a fascinating document of legendary band Coil in the form of an anthology of film works by founding members John Balance and Peter Christopherson. From their early films made in the 1970s to the more accomplished works of the 1980s/90s, they alternate between home movie, medical art, homoerotic performances, and body horror. These short films and other moments immortalized on film are firmly rooted within an aesthetic sense that resonates with the concerns of the emerging industrial scene in England. At the intersections of Eros and Thanatos, these images have been assembled by Maxime Lachaud and Reivaks Timeless into a raw, hallucinatory, and immersive film. Underpinned by a number of previously unpublished compositions by Balance and Christopherson, A Way to Die is a unique document, sensual, disturbing, and profoundly haunted.