*CFP* "REPRESENTATIONS AS WEAPONS: CULT FILM AND THE POLITICS OF RESISTANCE", THE 14TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE AND FESTIVAL ON GLOBAL CULT FILM TRADITIONS

Cine-Excess: The 14th International Conference and Festival on Global Cult Film Traditions

Representations as Weapons: Cult Film and the Politics of Resistance. 

5th- 7th November 2020 

(Online).

Cine-Excess 14, in association with Birmingham City University and the Black Sands Educational Project, features an online academic conference, alongside film industry panels and a streamed film festival season of related UK premieres and retrospectives. A Panel of international filmmakers discussing the theme of ‘Representations as Weapons’ will be announced in late July.

Previous guests of honour attending Cine-Excess have included Jen & Sylvia Soska (American Mary, Rabid [2019]), Norman J. Warren (Prey, Terror), Victoria Price (Author of Vincent Price: A Daughter’s Biography), Pete Walker (Frightmare and House of the Long Shadows), Catherine Breillat (Romance, Sex is Comedy), John Landis (An American Werewolf in London, The Blues Brothers), Roger Corman (The Masque of the Red Death, The Wild Angels), Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, King of the Ants), Brian Yuzna (Society, The Dentist), Dario Argento (Deep Red, Suspiria), Joe Dante (The Howling, Gremlins), Franco Nero (Django, Keoma, Die Hard II), Vanessa Redgrave (Blow Up, The Devils), Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust, House on the Edge of the Park), Enzo G. Castellari (Keoma, The Inglorious Basts), Sergio Martino (Torso, All the Colours of the Dark), Jeff Lieberman (Squirm, Blue Sunshine) and Pat Mills (Action Magazine, 2000 AD).

For its 2020 edition, Cine-Excess is working in collaboration with the Black Sands Educational Project, which seeks to educate UK-based BAME artists, filmmakers and audiences about the subversive potential that surrounds black representations in cult and marginal cinema formats. The focus of the Black Sands project helps informs this year’s conference theme: Representations as Weapons: Cult Film and the Politics of Resistance. This theme considers the extent to which the struggle for representations by various ethnicities, genders and divergent groups is enacted through a range of classic and contemporary cult film genres.

This focus on representations as weapons will consider the complex issues of gender and racial diversity as embodied by the cult image, whilst exploring a range of international traditions, directors and performers whose work can be seen as existing at the borders of cinematic excess and political struggle. Further topics might consider the work of classic and contemporary minority and female filmmakers, alongside those performers whose works annex social commentary with unconventional content, while issues of diaspora, disability, mental health and migration are other key topics that will be discussed by this year’s event. Proposals are invited for papers that consider cult film case-studies within a range of differing contexts that relate to this year’s theme. We would particularly welcome contributions that focus on the following areas:

• Manipulating the Mainstream: Jordan Peele and the New Politics of Race Horror
• Between Genres and Against the Grain: Female Voices in Cult and Extreme Cinema
• The Role of Race and Ethnicity in Horror Remakes
• From Cause Célèbre to Cultural Icon: New Readings of Pam Grier and Performativity
• Representation as Weapons: Cult Cinema at Key Points of Historical Conflict
• Race Re-Framed: New Readings of Blaxploitation Cinema Cycles
• Inclusion in Excess: Using the Extreme Image in Educational and Pedagogic Practices
• Classic and Contemporary Images of Black American Horror 
• From Diversity to Deviance: The Struggle for Sexual Identity in Marginal Film
• Screening Diversity, Consent and Desire in Marginal Film and Digital Sex/Pornography
• Coloniser, Colonised and Cult: Film Narratives and the Struggle for Representation
• Bodies as Battlegrounds: LGBTQ+ Representations and Intimacies
• Terrifying Outsiders: Migrant Traumas and Regional Conflicts in Cult Film Narratives
• “Gypsies”, Roma and Nomads: Cult Representations of Travellers and Traveller Communities
• Dubbed but Highly Dangerous: The Political Reception of European Radical Film Texts
• Transnational and Trash: Conflicted Notions of Nationhood in Pulp Cinema
• Margins Within Margins: Black Trans-representation in Film
• Disability, Diversity and Representation in Cult Cinema
• Sco210<ring the Resistance: Cult Soundtracks as Symbols of Rebellion
• Screening Rights and the Battle for Embodiment: Trans and Non-Binary Voices on Screen
• Split: Framing Mental Health in Exploitation Cinema
• Framing the Forgotten: Dispossessed UK Communities on Screen
• Bodies as Weapons: Classic and Contemporary Case-Studies of Subversive Cult Performers
• Diverse Voices in Distribution: New Organisations and Patterns of Screen Disruption
• Cult on Cults: Fictional Representations of Real Life Marginal Communities

Since its inception in 2007, 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 scholars, activists, film makers and community groups.

Please send a 300-word abstract and a short (one page) C.V. by Monday 21st September 2020 to:

• Professor Xavier Mendik, Director of the Cine-Excess International. Film Festivalxavier.mendik@cine-excess.co.uk 
• Dr. Gemma Commane, Co-Director of the Cine-Excess International Film Festivalgemma.commane@cine-excess.co.uk 
• Jo Delyse-Packwood, Co-Director of the Cine-Excess International Film Festivaljo.delyse.packwood@cine-excess.co.uk

A final listing of accepted presentations will be released on Friday 25th September 2020.

[*Cine-Excess continues to monitor the Covid 19 (coronavirus) outbreak, regularly reviewing the situation and taking necessary action. Our priority is to ensure the health and safety of our attendees, delegates, staff, and everyone we work with. Cine-Excess reserves the right to amend the conference and festival programme in the event of changes to Covid 19 restrictions and guidelines.]