Projected Figures is a site dedicated to those creatures brought to strange, shimmering life on our screens, for our awe, our amusement, and occasionally our alienation.
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Anton Bitel was born in Australia, and has lived in the UK since 1989. Proud father of twins, occasional Classicist and full-time caffeine junkie, he compensates for a general sense of disgruntlement by moping about in darkened screening rooms watching other people’s joys and sorrows. He seeks elusive vicarious thrills from all genres and non-genres, but tends to prefer anything extreme, odd, miserable or tawdry.
He is at home with horror, ‘arthouse’, the avant garde and Asian cinema. A regular freelancer for Sight & Sound, Little White Lies, SciFiNow, VODzilla.co, EyeforFilm and Dirty Movies, he also guests on BBC World Service’s The Arts Hour, podcasts for Truth & Movies, and has been a programmer for the London Korean Film Festival since 2018. He joined the Online Film Critics Society in 2007 and the London Film Critics’ Circle in 2009.
Anton has contributed writing to the books Directory of World Cinema: Britain 2 (Intellect), World Film Locations: Sydney (Intellect), Cattet & Forzani (Queensland Film Festival), 30-Second Cinema (Ivy Press), Strickland (Queensland Fim Festival) and (in Korean translation) 한류를 읽는 안과 밖의 시선: 2024 K-콘텐츠 [The inside and outside perspectives of reading the Korean Wave: 2024 K-Content]. He has essays in the home release booklets for Arrow’s Koyaanisqatsi, Donnie Darko, Audition, We Are The Flesh, The Villainess, Blade of the Immortal, Dave Made A Maze, Climax, Mega Time Squad, Akio Jissôji: The Buddhist Trilogy (on Mandala), One Missed Call Trilogy, I See You, Jesus Shows You The Way To The Highway (on Crumbs), Bloodhound, Threshold, The Last Matinee, Two Witches, Incredible But True, The Beta Test, Pandemonium, Nightsiren, J-Horror Rising, The Last Video Store, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, The House with the Laughing Windows (US), Calvaire and Hush; Eureka!’s Journey to the Shore, Werewolf and Martyrs; Second Sight’s World On A Wire, The Strangers, Paranormal Activity, The Witch, Monster, Possessor, The Sacrament, The Coffee Table, When Evil Lurks and The Devil’s Candy; Yellow Veil Pictures’ They Look Like People, Foxhole, The Saragossa Manuscript and Once Upon A Time In Uganda; Anti-Worlds’ Earwig; Umbrella Entertainment’s Them (Ils), Tank Girl, JSA, Darling (John Schlesinger profile), Triangle, Severance, The Crying Game, Black Death, Thai Horror Collection and Universal Horror: Monsters & Curiosities; Curzon’s Peter Strickland: A Curzon Collection; and IFC Films’ The Painted Bird.
He has recorded an audio commentary for Arrow’s Jesus Shows You The Way To The Highway (with Alexandra Heller-Nicholas), for Dark Sky Films’ A Desert (with Joshua Erkman); and video essays for Arrow’s The Deeper You Dig, Sleep, The Leech and Heuesera: The Bone Woman, for Radiance’s She Dies Tomorrow, Litan (the latter in the Jean-Pierre Mocky boxset The Agitator) and River of Grass, and for Umbrella’s Pulse, Open Your Eyes, The Fall, Thai Horror Collection (2 essays), New Extremity Collection Vol. 1 (on High Tension) and Kiwi Kult Volume 1 (on Glenn Standring’s The Irrefutable Truth About Demons and Perfect Creature) and New Extremity Vol. 2 (on Twenty-Nine Palms). He has served on juries for the inaugural Soho Horror Film Festival 2018 and 2019, Fantasporto 2019 (Fantasy) and 2020 (Director’s Week), GrimmFest 2019 and Grimmfest Easter Edition 2021, and Fractured Visions 2019.
Hi Anton – Just wanted to chime in and thank you for for the piece on Vulcanizadora. I never really care if a critic likes my movies or not, I just want them to give them some thought and write sincerely. So I very much appreciate the intelligent words about a film that’s not easy to wrap your head around. Joel
Thank you very much, Joel – and just for the record, and despite what you say, I liked your film very much!