Writer. Film Scholar. Journalist. Editor.
I am currently working on a book on sado-masochistic themes in 1960s-70s cinema, looking at films such as La prisonnière, The Story of O, The Night Porter and In the Realm of the Senses as well as the work of Jess Franco and Alain Robbe-Grillet, and exploring the way they revisit the themes laid out... Continue Reading →
I reviewed Mark Jenkin's follow-up to Bait for Sight&Sound. An oblique take on 1970s folk horror, Enys Men creates a genuinely haunting experience rooted in the Cornish landscape.A middle-aged woman (Mary Woodvine) lives alone on an island dominated by an ancient stone. Every day, she goes through the same mysterious ritual, checking unusual flowers on... Continue Reading →
I will be speaking at the Suspirias symposium on Saturday 11th June at Queen Mary University. Tickets are free, registration essential. This symposium considers Dario Argento’s 1977 giallo horror Suspiria alongside Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 film of the same name. The 2018 film has been positioned in a cycle of ‘serious’ horror films, an arthouse spin... Continue Reading →
I will be part of a panel exploring Japanese cinema in the second half of the 20th century as part of the BFI's Japan 2021 season on Thursday 2nd December with season co-programmer Alexander Jacoby, author, filmmaker and curator Jasper Sharp, academic and author Rayna Denison and film scholar, writer and editor Virginie Sélavy. Buy... Continue Reading →
As part of Monstrum Society's autumn 2021 'Gothic Excursions, Disrupted Histories' series, I will be delivering an online lecture on how Jean Rollin's virgins and vampires, under the influence of Georges Bataille, revitalised the subversive potential of the Gothic heroine in the 1970s. Lecture available from Monday 18th October on the Monstrum Society website. Other... Continue Reading →
In a radio show broadcast on Monday 6 September 2021 at 8pm on Resonance 104.4FM, I discuss the Arrow Video FrightFest festival (26 August - 5 September) with Kim Newman, author of Nightmare Movies and co-writer of Mark Kermode’s Secrets of Cinema, and film critic Anton Bitel. Repeated on Tuesday 7 September, 10am. Podcast on... Continue Reading →
I am thrilled to be one of the 8 writers selected as part of the New Blood class of 2021 for my script REFRACTED. New Blood is an initiative organised by producer Giles Edwards of Queensbury Pictures in partnership with FrightFest to find new UK genre screenwriters. The workshop session on Thursday 26th August with... Continue Reading →
I wrote an essay on Blind Beast (1969), Yasuzô Masumura's hallucinatory masterpiece of perverse eroticism, for the Arrow Video Blu-ray, released 23 August 2021.
During the first lockdown, I made a horror/fantastique short film. In KINSHIP, a Zoom call between a mother with dementia and her daughter is not what it seems. Kinship was made with no budget. I wanted to see if I could make a film in these restricted circumstances. In the strange atmosphere of lockdown I... Continue Reading →
I have written about Jean Rollin's virgins and vampires for The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies (Issue 18, Autumn 2020), looking at the way in which they develop the subversive aspects of the persecuted maidens and fatal women of 18th- and 19th-century Anglo-Irish Gothic novels into the 1960s-70s. Pic credit: Le viol du... Continue Reading →
Virginie Sélavy 