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 have written an essay on 'Witchfinders and Sorcerers: Sorcery and Counterculture in the Work of Michael Reeves', published in the new book Sixties British Cinema Reconsidered, just out from Edinburgh University Press. Picture credit: The Sorcerers (Dir. Michael Reeves, 1967)
I contributed an essay on the castle in Jean Rollin, exploring the Gothic and surrealist origins of one of the director's preferred settings, the real locations used, and their subversive significance to LOST GIRLS: THE PHANTASMAGORICAL CINEMA OF JEAN ROLLIN, edited by Samm Deighan and written by all women critics, scholars and film historians, published... Continue Reading →
I commissioned and edited a collection of essays looking at the theme of 'the end' in cinema, in words and images, and from an extensive range of angles, the unfinished, the decaying, the apocalyptic, the undead, the historical, the end as fate and the end as denouement. From the gutter to the avant garde, The... Continue Reading →
My Ph.D. thesis, completed at King's College, London, in 2003 (unpublished), focuses on Hollis Frampton, a central figure of the practice of film that has variously been referred to as “experimental”, “underground” and “avant-garde”. This thesis attempts to demonstrate the coherence of Frampton’s ambitious project of constituting a tradition of film. It is a detailed... Continue Reading →
Virginie Sélavy 