Cine-Excess has been running since 2007 as an annual film festival and conference that combines visiting international filmmakers, a themed academic conference and film premieres and exclusive screenings. Previous Cine-Excess guests have included Pam Grier (Jackie Brown), Jen & Sylvia Soska (American Mary), Norman J. Warren (Prey), Catherine Breillat (Romance), Roger Corman (The Masque of the Red Death) Dario Argento (Deep Red), Joe Dante (The Howling), Franco Nero (Django) and Vanessa Redgrave (Blow Up).
For its 15th annual edition, Cine Excess enters a new decade of the twenty-first century and considers the diverse history and growing hybridity of cult cinema and its representations. The focus of this year’s conference theme: Bodies as Battlegrounds: Disruptive Sexualities in Cult Cinema, considers the extent to which the struggle for inclusive representation by various marginalised groups is enacted through a variety of classic and contemporary cult film genres and their forms and technologies.
Keynote Alexandra Heller-Nicholas has written eight books on cult, horror, and exploitation cinema with a focus on gender politics. Her seminal publications include 1000 women in horror (BearManor Media, 2020) which maps women’s contributions to horror from 1895-2018. She has also published Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study (McFarland, 2011), which will celebrate its 10-year anniversary at Cine-Excess. In her keynote address, Alexandra will explore the revision of her book which now includes a new chapter on women directed rape-revenge films. Here, Alexandra rejects the idea that women-led rape-revenge narratives are purely a post #MeToo phenomenon.
Keynote Alison Peirse also considers women’s contributions to the horror genre. Alison’s multi award-winning edited collection ‘Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre’ (Rutgers University Press, 2021) has been praised for transforming the discourse on women-led horror. Building on this timely work, Alison’s keynote address considers female shape shifters in cult and horror cinema, with a specific focus on the disruptive werewolf archetype.
The focus on disruptive cults representations considered by both keynote speakers also informs this year’s call for papers, which will consider broader issues of gender diversity, sexuality, and representations of marginalised groups as intersections embodied by the cult image. Bodies as Battlegrounds: Disruptive Sexualities in Cult Cinema also explores a range of global cinema traditions, subversive filmmakers, and performers whose work can be understood as engaging with the socio-political struggle for inclusive representation. Further topics might also consider the work of classic and contemporary marginalised and Queer filmmakers, alongside those performers whose works offer social commentary with unconventional content, while issues of diaspora, race, disability, and mental health are other key topics that will be discussed by this year’s event.
Proposals are invited for individual papers or pre-constituted panels that consider cult film case-studies within a range of differing contexts that relate to this year’s theme. However, we would particularly welcome contributions that focus on the following areas:
Sexuality Re-Framed: New Interpretations of Disruptive Screen Identities
Feral in Female Form: Subversive Females and Animalistic Images
Distinctive Visions: New Interpretations of Radical Cult Filmmakers
Troubling the Nation-State: Disruptive Visions of America in Cult Cinema
Diverse Voices in Body Genre Cinema: Classic and Contemporary Case-Studies
The Other Reframed: The Role of Sexuality and Identity in Horror Remakes
Classic and Contemporary Visions of Queer Global Horror
Inclusion through Disruption: Disruptive Narratives in Educational and Pedagogic Practices
National Cinema, National Bodies: Problematising British Cinema Through Cult Genres
From Deviance to Diversity: Changing Struggles for Identity in Queer Cinema
Screening Diversity, Challenging Desire: Celluloid Sin, Digital Sex and Pornography
Margins Within Margins: LGBTQ+ Representations and Intimacies
Screening Rights and the Battle for Embodiment: Trans and Non-Binary Voices on Screen
From Transmedia to Transhuman: Divergent Bodies in Digital spaces
Fear in Folk: From Found Footage to Found Identities
Short, Sharp Shocks: Short Films as Radical Formats of the Self
Reconfiguring Violated Bodies: The Body as Battleground in Rape-Revenge
Cult Stars and Disruptive Performances
New Territories, Diverse Fears: Cult Film’s Indigenous Communities
Exhibition and Inclusivity: Industry Perspectives on Diverse Digital Channels
Over the past 15 years Cine-Excess has developed a reputation as an inclusive and safe space in which to present new work around global cult film cultures. We welcome submissions from emerging and established and scholars, activists, film makers and community groups.
Please send a 300-word abstract and a short (one page) C.V. by 23rd August 2021 to:
Amy Harris
Co-Director of Cine-Excess
Amy.Harris@cine-excess.co.ukProfessor Xavier Mendik
Director of the Cine-Excess International Film Festival
Birmingham City University
xavier.mendik@cine-excess.co.ukA final listing of accepted presentations will be released on 27th August 2021.
