<ul><li>Ela Orleans live performance Friday 28/08 6pm (BST)</li></ul> <ul><li>Film programme available from Friday 28/08 7pm (BST) - Tuesday 01/09 11:59pm (BST)</li></ul> Cowards Bend the Knee has optional English SDH, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazilian) and Turkish subtitles. <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/eventive-static/89ccd534464dbc2b96f75c73cb44909d.jpg">

Director Guy Maddin introduces Cowards Bend the Knee with Ela Orleans new score.

Guy Maddin introduction

Jam-packed with enough kinetically photographed action to seem like a never-ending cliff-hanger, Guy Maddin's tremendous Cowards Bend the Knee is a Feuillade serial ultra-condensed and blenderised, as ghostwritten by Euripides. If fiction is sometimes barely disguised autobiography, Cowards is its mirror image, twisted and poisoned wish-fulfillment: the mythomaniacal Maddin casts "himself" (actually, Darcy Fehr) as a hockey sniper made lily-livered by mother and daughter femme fatales, and resurrects his father as the team's radio broadcaster and his own romantic antagonist. Set in a shadow-suffused hockey arena and a Mabuse-like beauty salon-slash-abortion clinic lined with two-way mirrors, the plot drips with the Grecian formula, as sordid family secrets spawn unintentional murder most foul. Originally conceived of and presented as a peephole show,&nbsp;Cowards Bend The Knee’s ten chapters concoct an alternative cinematic biography for director Guy Maddin, torn between the influence of his hockey star father and his attraction to Meta, the beautiful girl from the local beauty salon / illegal abortion clinic. Ela Orleans' new soundtrack follows her new scores for Frank Borzage’s&nbsp;Lucky Star, Carl Dreyer’s&nbsp;Vampyr&nbsp;and Jack Smith’s&nbsp;Flaming Creatures. “This wild, gorgeous and almost insane new score by Ela Orleans has completely reinvented&nbsp;Cowards. She understood at musical levels the depths of shame, heights of hysteria, and quivering viscous ick I felt while shooting it; she drew out from the film every dark strand of soiled soul unravelling within and hung it in a new moonbeam for all the appalled to see.”&nbsp;Guy Maddin Content Warnings | Cowards Bend The Knee contains depictions of abortion; scenes of bloody gore; scenes of surgery; scenes of murder and physical violence; nudity; a scene of over the clothes genital touching of a dead/unconscious body.

Cowards Bend the Knee (Ela Orleans Score)

Director Guy Maddin and composer Ela Orleans discuss their collaboration on Cowards Bend the Knee. “This wild, gorgeous and almost insane new score by Ela Orleans has completely reinvented&nbsp;Cowards. She understood at musical levels the depths of shame, heights of hysteria, and quivering viscous ick I felt while shooting it; she drew out from the film every dark strand of soiled soul unravelling within and hung it in a new moonbeam for all the appalled to see.” Guy Maddin

Guy Maddin & Ela Orleans In Conversation

Ignorant armies of sketchy people clashing by night.

Audition 1 (Workbooks)

Audition 2 (Workbooks)

Ela Orleans will perfom a selection of her music from Cowards Bend The Knee and her other musical output.

Ela Orleans Live Performance

North America

Cowards Bend the Knee (Ela Orleans score)

General Admission

Donation to {{name}}

Donate!

These are all the passes tied to your account. Now, use our online schedule to reserve tickets. You can access your tickets via {{my_tickets_link|"My Tickets"}} or via the PDFs attached to each ticket order confirmation email. {{buy_pass_link|Looking to buy more passes?}}

These are all your purchased tickets. Open this page on your phone, and at the door tap the "Show Barcode" button and show your screen to the attendant. Prefer paper? You can always print the PDF attached to the order confirmation email, or click one of the gears below and select "Download tickets PDF". If purchasing multiple tickets for an event, be sure to print or show each unique ticket barcode.

Weekend Pass

Festival Pass

None available

Explore our on-demand catalog here, and head over to the {{livestreams|Live Streams}} tab to see what's coming up.

Here's what's coming up soon. Can't make it? No sweat. Many live streams will be available for on-demand viewing as well.