Transnational Horror, Folklore, and Cultural Politics
Focusing on the historical legacies and contemporary trends of folk horror across various geographical and industrial contexts of filmmaking, the symposium aims to facilitate an inquiry that unpacks social, cultural, and political meanings behind the current revival of the genre, and locates these meanings in local, national, regional and transnational settings of cultural production. Ranging from non-Anglophone histories of folk/paranormal horror, and the cross-cultural mobilities of the genre in various national and transnational contexts of film production, to the emerging issues of representation, identity politics, genre, style and inter-medial convergences of contemporary gothic narratives, the symposium will feature diverse methodological approaches to the study of folklore on screen by also intervening into the Anglo-American dominance of horror studies.
Time: 18 May 2022, Wednesday, 09:00-17:30
Venue: Nottingham Trent University, School of Arts and Humanities, Chaucer Building (CHR 1803, LT4), Goldsmith Street, Nottingham NG1 4BU
Symposium Programme:
9:00-9:30
Coffee
INTRODUCTION
9:30-10:00
Locating the Folk Horror Revival
Cüneyt Çakırlar, Associate Professor in Film & Visual Culture, Nottingham Trent University, UK
PANEL 1: GENRE, STYLE AND THE SUPERNATURAL: FOLK HORROR WITH/OUT ALLEGORY
10:00-10:30
Martial Arts Performance and the Allegorical Encounter in 1980s Hong Kong Cinema’s Jiangshi (殭屍先生 Mr “Stiff Corpse”) film cycle.
Gary Needham, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Liverpool, UK
10:30-11:00
The film sound and the fantastic in contemporary Korean occult movies: An Analysis of The Priests (2015) and The Wailing (2016)
Nikki J.Y. Lee, Senior Lecturer in Asian Media, Nottingham Trent University, UK
11:00-11:30
The Supernatural in Iranian War Films
Zahra Khosroshahi, Lecturer in Film and Television Studies, University of Glasgow, UK
PANEL 2: THE GENDERED SUBJECT OF FOLK HORROR
12:00 – 12:30
Feminism with swords and hooves: Aicha Kandisha, transnational cinema, and postcolonial horror
Rosalind Galt, Professor of Film Studies, King’s College London, UK
12:30 – 13:00
Abject maternity and transnational femininities in Anglophone representations of La Llorona
Gustavo Subero, Lecturer in Visual Cultures & Science Humanities, Imperial College London, UK
13:00-13:30
Djinns of Post-millennial Turkish Horror Film: Forms of Toxic Kinship in D@bbe (2006-15) and Siccin (2014-19)
Cüneyt Çakırlar, Associate Professor in Film & Visual Culture, Nottingham Trent University, UK
13:30-14:30 LUNCH BREAK
PANEL 3: TRANSNATIONAL MOBILITIES OF FOLK HORROR
14:30-15:00
Global/Local Folk Horror: Tumbbad (2018) and the Transnational Dynamics of Indian Horror Cinema
Iain Robert Smith, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, King’s College London, UK.
15:00-15:30
Arctic Horror: Sakha (Yakutia) Cinema and Contemporary De-Colonising Process
Vlad Strukov, Associate Professor in Film and Digital Culture, University of Leeds, UK.
PANEL 4: FOLK HORROR BEYOND THE APPARATUS
16:00-16:30
Cheap as folk: British horror cinema at the dawn of the video era
Johnny Walker, Associate Professor, Northumbria University, UK
16:30-17:00
Real folk horror: ghost-hunting with Indonesia’s shaman-filmmakers
Alicia Izharuddin, Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies, University of Malaya, Malaysia
17:00-17:30 CONCLUSIONS
This event is free. The symposium will not be live-streamed. To register, please contact the organiser Cüneyt Çakırlar.
Transnational Horror, Folklore, and Cultural Politics 