Sunday 7 December 2008

The Italian Gothic, 1956-66, as Transcultural Gothic

Part of the reason for my relative lack of updates over the past week or so is that I was preparing for and then away at a two-day symposium on The Global Gothic, at which I did a presentation on The Italian Gothic, 1956-66, as Transcultural Gothic.

It was basically about I Vampiri as the first modern Gothic horror film, its failure relative to The Curse of Frankenstein; the subsequent emergence of Italian Gothic in the films of Bava, Freda, Margheriti and company where they passed their work off as that of English or Americans, and the distinctively Italian characteristics that could nevertheless be discerned in terms of the aesthetics and thematics.

I've uploaded the Powerpoint I used here for anyone interested:

http://rapidshare.com/files/171254256/The_Italian_Gothic_1956-66_as_Transnational_Gothic.ppt

It may help to supplement it with the clips of Dracula arriving at Lucy's bedroom window in Fisher's Dracula and Kurt Menliffe's appearance before Nevenka at night in The Whip and the Body, along with the sequence in Kill Baby Kill where Dr Eswai ends up chasing and catching up with his double...

The panel I was on also had a very good presentation on Coffin Joe :-)

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