Writer. Editor. Film Scholar. Script Consultant
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 →
As part of the Barbican’s ‘Cheap Thrills’ season, I examine the unique women directors who worked in the golden age of exploitation cinema, their struggles and successes, and the singular works they created in this one-hour lecture. Stripped and slashed, sometimes both at the same time: this is the fate usually reserved to women in... Continue Reading →
In the 1960s-70s, the relaxation of censorship, together with women’s greater social assertiveness, led to the appearance of a substantial number of art and/or exploitative films that explored male/female relationships through sexual power games. A large sub-section, including Mario Bava’s The Whip and the Body (1963), Luis Buñuel’s Belle de jour (1967), Sergio Martino’s The... Continue Reading →
The history of cinema is littered with unfinished grand projects by megalomaniac directors including Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick and Erich von Stroheim. That Henri-Georges Clouzot should be added to this list seems, at first, surprising. One of France’s greatest directors, he established his reputation with tight, economical, superbly crafted crime thrillers throughout the 40s and... Continue Reading →
The delirious adventures of a queer criminal as seen by Yukio Mishima and Kinji Fukasaku screens at the Etrange Festival in Paris on 13 September 2017. Footsteps echo in the dark. A hand knocks on a door. A flap is lifted, a pair of eyes peeks out, the door opens. Footsteps lead down a corridor... Continue Reading →
Virginie Sélavy 