Writer. Editor. Film Scholar. Script Consultant
I had the pleasure of doing a commentary with the brilliant Lindsay Hallam for the Radiance Films 4K restoration of Harry Kumel's exquisite Daughters of Darkness (1971), out now. More information on the Blu-ray on the Radiance Films website.
In this episode of the Straight On Till Morning Show, I host a programme on the FrightFest festival, which took place from 21st to the 25th August 2025 in London. I talk to Kim Newman, author of Nightmare Movies and co-writer of Mark Kermode’s Secrets of Cinema, and film critic Dr Anton Bitel, who guide... Continue Reading →
I will be introducing Hollis Frampton's Zorns Lemma (1970) at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam on Sunday 27th October 2024. The screening is part of the museum's 'Underground: American Avant-Garde Film in the 1960s', which runs from 13th October 2024 to 5th January 2025. More information about Zorns Lemma on the Eye Filmmuseum website.
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 →
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 about the enduring influence of 1970s cinema on horror film of the past decade for the November 2020 issue of Sight & Sound. Pic credit: Color Out of Space (2020)
I contributed a video profile of the fascinating Irish-Italian actress Lisa Gastoni for Hammer Volume 5: Death and Deceit, which includes Visa to Canton/Passport to China (1961), starring Gastoni as a beautiful, mercenary spy. Gastoni is best known for the roles of seductively transgressive women she played in Italian films such as Wake Up and... Continue Reading →
Italian director Sergio Martino worked in a wide variety of film genres, starting with Mondo-type documentaries in the late 1960s, followed by the obligatory Western, before moving on to giallo, for which he is best known, and later, poliziottesco. The 1960s-70s were an ebullient time for the Italian film industry, which rapidly moved from one... Continue Reading →
A pioneering filmmaker in Japan, Sachi Hamano was the first woman to become a pink film director without having been an actress first. In the 60s, only male graduates could become directors in Japan, so pink film was Hamano’s way into filmmaking. She got her start working as an assistant director at Wakamatsu Productions before... Continue Reading →
Too often put in the same bag as the cynical, Hollywood-engineered wave of blaxploitation flicks it influenced, Melvin Van Peebles' Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song is pure, unadulterated ghetto anger that burns as fiercely now as when it was made over thirty years ago. Having started a filmmaking career in France with the support of Henri... Continue Reading →
Virginie Sélavy 