Saturday 29 June 2019

New Chapter

Image result for horror a companion
My new chapter "Spierig Brothers' Jigsaw (2017) - Torture Porn Rebooted?" appears in the new anthology Horror: A Companion (2019, Peter Lang) edited by Simon Bacon. Read my chapter here, or find more information on the book here


Abstract: 
After a seven-year hiatus, the Saw franchise returned. Critics overwhelming disapproved of the franchise’s reinvigoration, and much of that dissention centred around a label that is synonymous with Saw: ‘torture porn’. Numerous critics pegged the original Saw (2004) as torture porn’s prototype. Accordingly, critics  characterised Jigsaw’s release as heralding an unwelcome ‘torture porn comeback’. This chapter investigates the legitimacy of this concern in order to determine what ‘torture porn’ is and means in the Jigsaw era.

Saturday 20 April 2019

Kurja Polt 2019

I have just returned from Kurja Polt Festival where I presented a research paper about the slasher film alongside my fellow presenters Jamie Sexton and Alison Peirse. The event was organised and chaired by Russ Hunter. My thanks as always to Masa Pece and the Kurja Polt team for having me back. It was my third time at the festival, and it is always fantastic.

Here is a video of the complete talk (I was feeling really pretty ill during this, so probably not my finest hour):


A full gallery of photos from the event is available here. Some highlights below




Here is the summary of my talk, taken from the Kurja Polt zine:

[I think "dobra brada" is a compliment about my beard]

Here is a snap of me talking about slasher films on Slovenian National TV (on Osmi Dan)

Monday 25 March 2019

Offscreen 2019

On 23rd March I returned to Offscreen Festival in Brussels for the fourth time. This year, I participated in a conference based on Offscreen’s Death on Film theme. I interviewed David Kerekes about his groundbreaking book Killing for Culture, I delivered a paper entitled “La Petite Mort: Sex and Death in Hardcore Horror”, and I participated in a panel discussion with David, Dr Tina Kendall (Anglia Ruskin University), Dr Russ Hunter (Northumbria University), and festival guest of honour Jörg Buttgereit (director of Necromantik, Schramm, and Der Todesking). Thank you to the festival team for having me back, and to everyone who came to the event

Wednesday 23 January 2019

Three online articles


January 2019 has been a month of blog-related activities for me

Here is a post I wrote for the Screening Sex blog about the recent BBFC consultation exercise, and their stance on films featuring sexual violence:
Here is a post on Henry Jenkins’ blog in which I'm interviewed by Dr Billy Proctor:
Finally, here is a blog post about the impact case study I’ve been involved in, which is led by Russ Hunter, and encompasses colleagues from across Film and Media at Northumbria