Filmic - our annual celebration highlighting the creative connections across music and film - continues this month its exploration of the influence of electronic musicians and instrumentation on filmmaking with a focus on the groundbreaking simplicity of the electronic keyboard scores of composer and director John Carpenter.

If John Carpenter’s legendary status as a film director is indisputable, he has in recent years become cited as a major inspiration as a composer. Dark atmospheres, haunted effects and subtle drone textures have long been a staple of Carpenter’s musical oeuvre, and the magpie-like tendency of many modern electronic composers meant that they were always bound to turn to him as they looked to create their own sonic landscapes. His iconic film scores set the template for a decade’s worth of hard-boiled crime thrillers and horror chillers churned out by Hollywood and you only have to look at more recent examples like Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive, or the throbbing synth menace of David Robert Mitchell's It Follows to see his continued influence on a new wave of filmmakers and composers.

This month we look back of some of Carpenter's most iconic films and influential scores including the fleet and ferocious piece of genre craftsmanship that was Assault on Precinct Thirteen (Sun 1 May); it's follow-up Halloween (Sun 8 May) which is not only one of the most influential and enduring horror movies of all time but also one of the genre's most iconic musical scores, capable of bringing chills both inside and outside the cinema in equal measure; eerie pirate ghost story and understated gem The Fog (Sun 15 May); cult cinema fave and dystopian action thriller Escape From New York (Sun 22 May); plus Carpenter's collaboration with legendary composer Ennio Morricone whose icily monochrome score added memorably to the uneasy atmosphere engulfing the paranoid inhabitants of sci-fi/horror classic The Thing (Sun 29 May).

Part of Filmic 2016.

• Also, in this month's podcast listen to Watershed's Cinema Curator Mark Cosgrove discuss the historic links between music and film from the early days of cinema, via Psycho and Jaws, to Carpenter's era defining and groundbreaking scores.

Tickets: £6.50 full / £4.50 concessions and 24 and under. Get £1.00 off dishes over £7.00 in the Café/Bar on the same day with your ticket.

---