"Practical Magic" Film Screening & Panel Discussion

Join Salem Witchcraft & Folklore Festival for a screening of the 1998 witchcraft classic, Practical Magic, followed by a lively panel discussion amongst magical practitioners and folklorists exploring the film's themes and impact.​

About The Film:
In a small Massachusetts town, the Owens family have been regarded with suspicion for over three centuries due to their ancestor Maria Owens, who survived an attempted execution for witchcraft. Heartbroken when the father of her unborn child never returned to her, Maria cast a spell to prevent herself from ever falling in love again. The spell developed into a curse upon Maria's descendants, dooming any man an Owens woman loves.

​Tickets: $20 - advance purchase recommended

Location: Cinema Salem
 

About the Panelists:

Jesse Hathaway Diaz (he/him/they/them) is a folklorist, artist, performer and independent scholar with a Masters in Performance Studies from NYU. With initiations in several forms of witchcraft from Europe and the Americas, he is also a lifelong student of Mexican curanderismo, an initiated priest of Obatalá in the Lucumí Orisha tradition, and a Tatá Quimbanda. He co-hosts an occult themed podcast called ‘Radio Free Golgotha’, and edits the ‘Folk Necromancy in Transmission’ imprint through Revelore Press. For the better part of two decades, he has been involved with Theatre Group Dzieci, a New York based experimental theatre ensemble which explores theatre and ritual as a way, blending service with self-exploration and performance. Dividing his time between the Bronx and a farm in the Hudson Valley, his artistic and written work navigate the world-as-magic through exploring orality and transmission, decolonialism, ritual theory and praxis, herbalism and healing modalities through private study, apprenticeship, and community involvement. 

Professor Charles Porterfield (he/him) is an old-fashioned, no-nonsense, Old Testament reader and rootworker.  He writes, teaches, and lectures on hoodoo and conjure to help preserve and pass on the roots of the work as well as consults, prescribes, and divines work for those in need. He currently lives in Denton, Texas with his wife, legacy student, two cats, and a dead dog.

​Sasha (she/her) is an author, educator, consultant, and critic on the subjects of Cosmic Horrors (real/imagined), and the ecstatic-grotesque of the body (monster-flesh) in (Oc)culture, Literature, and Film. She professionally consults on aforementioned matters, presents at conferences, and writes film and literary criticism on these subjects. She has been published by Hadean Press, Asteria Press, and with forthcoming fiction in Cosmic Horror Monthly, Bloodletter Magazine, Cursed Morsels, and Neither Fish Nor Foul. When not creating for her Patreon and Substack, or writing reviews for MovieJawn, she teaches The Red Flesh Workshops, is EIC for the zine press antilogos press, and is a Speculative Fiction editor for Lumina Literary Journal.

Sarah Jezebel Wood is an artist, chandler, and sorceress with a penchant for ceremonial magic(k), whose work explores the ephemeral nature of the liminalities of life and death through the interactions of time, place, objects, and moments.  Her current work focuses through the lens of her camera or that of a bubbling pot of hot wax. Sarah has worked  with such artists as Alex & Allyson Grey at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors as one of the original inhabitants of CoSM upstate where she was performer, producer, and financial officer. In 2016 Sarah wrote and  produced SVB ROSA, a multidisciplinary performance exploring the initiatory path in Brooklyn, NY with her troupe LUNARIS. Recently she  has launched her own brand of intentionally crafted candles at Lovi Artes.