Call for Proposals: Doing Women’s Global Horror Film History

by: MAI , February 16, 2022

You are invited to submit a proposal for our special issue on women filmmakers working in global horror cinema. This issue will be published in late 2023. Each contributor will produce a video essay (5 – 10 minutes) and an accompanying piece of reflective writing (800–1000 words).

No experience in filmmaking or video essays is required. All training will be provided during an eight-month mentorship scheme. This scheme is funded by the AHRC, as part of Alison Peirse’s AHRC Fellowship in Feminist Horror Cinema.

The purpose of the special issue is two-fold:

The first aim is intellectual. This issue builds on the excellent work undertaken to date on women’s film history and develops it in relation to horror film. It also attempts to broaden the field of study: much of the scholarship to date on women and horror has focused on white anglophone women. This special issue opens out the field by illuminating films and filmmakers working outside of these contexts.

The second aim is to train and mentor scholars in how to think about, make and publish video essays. Contributors to this special issue will develop networks in the fields of screen media practice and videographic criticism, diversify their career prospects with new technical skills, and publish a double–peer-reviewed output in the groundbreaking feminist journal.

In addition, there will be opportunities for festival engagement. The Final Girls Berlin Film Festival will launch the special issue in an online, live showcase event. FGBFF is a festival run by women, championing horror by women and non-binary filmmakers. In 2021, it was voted one of the best horror film festivals in the world by Dread Central.

Contributors

Applications are particularly welcomed from early career researchers, PhD students, and junior colleagues.

Submissions are encouraged from those with intersectional identities that remain marginalised in the academy. These identities may include but are not limited to Black, Asian, people who belong to a minority ethnic community, people who identify as LGBT+; and people with disabilities.

Submissions are also encouraged from scholars who are interested in horror film and/or studying women filmmakers, but who don’t currently have the confidence or the knowledge to make their own video essays.

The Case Study

In 2015, Christine Gledhill and Julia Knight published Doing Women’s Film History. In their introduction, they suggested:

Like ourselves, the women we research are formed by their times—while they may push against the grain, they are nevertheless caught within what their times allow to their imaginations and roles’. (2015: 5)

Proposals are invited that implicitly or explicitly respond to this statement, with reference to your chosen case study.

The case study should be small, given the length of the video essay. Think of it as the equivalent of a 5-10 minute talk. You may wish to focus on one film made by a woman, a comparative study of two scenes from two films, or a single case study of a woman horror filmmaker.

The filmmaker can be a director, but this special issue is keen to highlight the work of women across many creative roles, including editors, cinematographers, composers, screenwriters, producers, production designers, costume designers etc, as well as women working in multi-hyphenated roles, e.g., writer-director.

It is worth noting that it may be enough to simply demonstrate that a woman had a major creative role in your chosen film. For example, if you find a woman production designer or editor, but don’t necessarily have a specific argument to make about their contribution—nor perhaps know how you might go about making that argument—you can signal your choice of case study comes from the fact that women were involved.

This is about consciousness-raising—both in terms of the work of women and from refocusing away from studying directors. It is an inherently feminist approach that considers how we raise the profile of women and how we make decisions about what films to study, when and why.

The chosen horror film itself does not need to have a feminist theme.

Finally, this special issue will prioritise proposals on filmmakers from, or working in, Africa, Latin America, South Asia, South–East Asia and the Middle East, as these have been historically underrepresented in studies of horror cinema.

The Mentorship Scheme

The scheme will run between May and December 2022. Successful applicants will receive a course of technical training, masterclasses, workshops and individual tutorials. All sessions will take place online, over Zoom.

You will not need to purchase filmmaking equipment or software to make your video essay. The training will include working with smartphones, PCs and free software.

Draft Schedule:

• Deadline for abstracts—March (AP)
• Review, make decisions on acceptance and write to contributors—April (AP)
• Production Workshop 1—May (MK)
• Production Workshop 2—May (MK)
• Masterclass 1 online + Q&A—May (CG)
• Production Workshop 3—June (MK)
• Participants make a rough cut of their film—July to August
• Work in progress session, sharing rough cuts—August (AP)
• Masterclass 2 online + Q&A—September (CG)
• Participants make a fine cut of their films—September to October
• Participants write their 800–word supporting statement—September to October
• Individual 30–minute tutorials online reviewing fine cut + statement—November (CG)
• Participants make revisions and produce the final cut—November to December
• Participants redraft their written statements—November to December
• Participants submit final cut + final statement—January 2023
• Launch and publication of special issue—late 2023

Mentors & Curators: 

The project is curated by the following scholars:

Alison Peirse is an Associate Professor in Film and Media at the University of Leeds. Her latest book, Women Make Horror: Filmmaking. Feminism, Genre (Rutgers UP, 2020) has been nominated for and won multiple awards around the globe. She also runs a horror film newsletter, The Losers’ Club, which she thinks you might like.

Catherine Grant is Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Reading, UK. She carries out her film and moving image studies research mostly in the form of remix-based video essays and pieces of writing about them. She also runs the Film Studies For Free social media platforms and is a founding co-editor of the award-winning peer-reviewed journal [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies.

Miriam Kent has a PhD in Film Studies with a focus on superheroes, representation and comic book adaptation. Her work also focuses on the intersection of media communication, creativity and feminisms and she has a special interest in arts-based research and transformative pedagogy. She is a creative practitioner working in both graphic- and moving-image media, including comics and video essays, and using both digital and traditional media.

Submission & Key Dates

Your proposal should consist of three documents:

An Abstract (250-500 words)

Please identify your case study, why you have chosen it, and how you plan to respond to the Gledhill & Knight quote. List any experience you have had with media production (none is required). Discuss your motivation for undertaking the mentoring scheme and explain what you hope to get out of it.

A One-page Mood Board

This consists of images from your chosen case study. Its purpose is to give a sense of the look and feel of your planned essay. You can make this using a few screenshots and Microsoft Word if you want—you will not be judged on technical skill.

A Short Bio (100 words)

This should include your education, employment, recent publications (if any).

Please combine the three documents into a single PDF.

Submit your PDF to AlisonPeirse at a.peirse@leeds.ac.uk by Thursday 17 March 2022.

Please use this subject title in your email: ‘Proposal: Doing Women’s (Global) (Horror) Film History’.

All applicants will be notified by Monday, 4 April 2022.

Prior to the deadline, please feel free to email Alison Peirse with any questions you have about this project or ideas for potential proposals—she would love to hear from you. Please use this subject title in your email: ‘Query: Doing Women’s (Global) (Horror) Film History’.

If you are interested in contributing but do not wish to make a video essay, the special issue will also feature a small selection of interviews and book reviews about women’s horror film history, women filmmakers in general, and women working in horror cinema in particular.

 

Recommended Viewing

If you are new to video essays, here are some suggestions to get you going. Catherine Grant’s ‘Interplay’ and ‘Uncontained’ are a very good place to start.

Cinematic Possession of Modern Women: Bollywood, Horror Movies (2021), Dissecting Naari, 9 mins.

Days Passed: Lee Kang–sheng Through the Eyes of Tsai Ming–Liang (2020), Michelle Cho, 3 mins.

How The Red Shoes Changed Horror Cinema (2021), Lillian Crawford, 10mins.

Imitation, Contamination, Dissolution: Bong Joon-Ho’s Memories of Murder (2016), Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin, 10mins.

Interplay (2015), Catherine Grant, 5mins.

Mourning with Minari (2021), Kevin B. Lee, 8mins.

On Psycho and The Witches (2020), Evelyn Kreutzer, 6mins.

Safe and The Neon Demon in dialogue (2021), Oswald Lten, 1-4mins.

The Moment of Recognition: Phantom Lady and Sorry, Wrong Number (2021), Patrick Keating, 10mins.

The Senses of an Ending (2018), Catherine Grant, 4mins.

The Story of a Dream: On Nightmare on Elm Street (2020), Cormac Donnelly, 5mins.

Uncontained (2014), Catherine Grant, 5 mins.

Recommended Readings

DiGravio, Will, Notes on Videographic Criticism, newsletter.

Gledhill, Christine and Julia Knight (2015), ‘Introduction’, in Christine Gledhill and Julia Knight (eds), Doing Women’s Film History: Reframing Cinemas, Past and Future Champaign: University of Illinois Press, pp.1–12.

Heller–Nicholas, Alexandra (2020), 1000 Women in Horror, 1895 – 2018 Florida: BearManor Media.

Keathley, Christian, Jason Mittell and Catherine Grant (2019), The Videographic Essay: Practice and Pedagogy, http://videographicessay.org/works/videographic-essay/index

Learning on Screen (2020), Introductory Guide to Video Essays, https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/guidance/introductory-guide-to-video-essays/

Lupher, Sonia (2020), ‘From Women’s Cinema to Women’s Horror Cinema: Genre and Gender in the Twenty-First Century’, PhD Thesis, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh.

Paszkiewicz, Katarzyna (2018), ‘When the Woman Directs (A Horror Film)’, in Mary Harrod and Katarzyna Paszkiewicz (eds), Women Do Genre in Film and Television, Abingdon: Routledge, pp.41–­56.

Peirse, Alison (ed) (2020), Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Pisters, Patricia (2020) New Blood in Contemporary Cinema: Women Directors and the Poetics of Horror, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Longer Video Essays

Here are a few longer video essays, playlists and lectures to watch for inspiration:

Black Lives Matter Video Essay Playlist (2020), Cydnii Wilde Harris. Kevin B. Lee and Will DiGravio, timings various.

David Lynch: The Treachery of Language (2018), Grace Lee, 11mins.

Hausu of the Rising Sun: Death of the Girl (2021), Georgia Thomas-Parr, 17mins.

Making Nearby: On Teaching and Unlearning Women’s Filmmaking through the Audiovisual Essay (2021), Catherine Grant, 1hr 37mins.

Midsommar’s Audiovisual Tricks (2021), Spikima Movies, 11mins.

My Final Girl: Black Women in American Horror (2016), Kristina Leath–Malin, 11mins.

My Mullholland (2020), Jessica McGoff, 15mins.

Pride and Pathology (2020), Darren Elliott–Smith, 36mins.

Rac(ism) & Horror (2021), Khadija Mbower, 37mins.

The Scholarly Video Essay (2021), Ian Garwood, 17mins.

White: K-Pop, Horror and the Curse of Fame (2021), Yhara Zayd, 21mins.