Pitchfork

Quoth a press release, Jaromil Jires' 1970 film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a "baroque, surrealist folk tale of a teenage girl's dreams and hallucinations as she experiences her first menstruation. Repeat encounters with witchcraft, vampires, the living dead, perverted monks and doppelganger distant cousins punctuate her journey into womanhood as the truth about her family's dubious past unfolds before her weeping eyes."

Yep, this thing has acid folk written all over it.

This weekend, it will have acid folk playing all over it too. Espers' Greg Weeks and Brooke Sietinsons and Fern Knight's Margie Wienk have assembled a choice group of Philadelphia musicians to perform an alternate live score for Valerie and Her Week of Wonders in New York.

The event, called The Valerie Project, goes down March 10 and 11 at 8:00 PM at NYC's Anthology Film Archives. The Project ensemble includes cellist Helena Espvall (also of Espers), harpist Mary Lattimore, vocalist Tara Burke (Fursaxa), bassist/percussionist Jesse Sparhawk (Timesbold), flautist/keyboardist Jessica Weeks (Woodwose, Grass), electronic artist Charles Cohen, and percussionist Jim Ayre (Fern Knight).

Jires' film is considered a new folk milestone and a part of the Czech New Wave movement, and Anthology will screen two more Czech New Wave classics-- Vojtech Jasny's Cassandra Cat (1963) and Juraj Herz's Morgiana (1972)-- before the Valerie Project event on March 11.

Rare reissue specialists Finders Keepers Records, meanwhile, released the original soundtrack to Valerie and Her Week of Wonders last week. It features an original score by Lubos Fiser and lots of acid folk types swear by it, so it must be completely incomprehensible to the drug-free.