Cirrus@Austlit

'At the intersection of theory and practice, Mapping Global Horror: Australia, Japan and Beyond put horror scholars in dialogue with filmmakers and festival producers. This enabled audiences to understand new dimensions of a medium that’s constantly fluctuating in form. The roundtable transcribed here was chaired by Adam Daniel, an academic and filmmaker from the Australian Film Television and Radio School and Western Sydney University. He was joined by Isabel Peppard: a director, animator and visual artist. Her animated short Butterflies (2012) won the Dendy Award at The Sydney Film Festival and was nominated for an Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award (AACTA). Caitlin Koller is an award-winning Australian filmmaker, featured in 1000 Women In Horror: 1895-2018 and Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre. Natalie Erika James’ feature length debut, Relic (2020), premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and received nominations for Best Film at the 2020 Gotham Awards as well as Best Film, Best Direction and Best Screenplay at the 2020 AACTA Awards. Asakura Kayoko was born and raised in Japan, her film My Girlfriend Is a Serial Killer (Hitsuji to ôkami no koi to satsujin, Asakura Kayoko, 2019) screened at the conference, alongside Relic.' (Introduction)

'Mapping Global Horror: Australia, Japan and Beyond brought world-leading scholars and filmmakers to Wurundjeri country for a two-day conference to navigate how the titular genre moves through time, space and cultures. Wurundjeri and Yorta Yorta Professor Andrew Peters opened the conference with an Acknowledgement of Country, which noted that the idea of the living dead (featured heavily at the conference) connects very deeply and very clearly with thousands of years of Indigenous thought. It’s within Indigenous culture to honour the dead, to understand that their spirits return and their connection to the living stays strong. While (particularly Western) horror conventions reflect the tendency to fear the dead, generally speaking, Indigenous cultures aren’t particularly disturbed by the spirit world. The conference reflected the maturation of horror film studies. It posited that perhaps the genre emerges from a place of empathy, as opposed to terror. Filmmakers and academics seemed to share an understanding that the horrors of human history are largely catalysed by asymmetrical power dynamics. Compelling horror cinema, or scholarship, will seek to reconcile with this.' (Introduction)

'Fred Schepisi's film (in)famously blurred the line between villain and victim in racially motivated violence. This critique argues that the socio-political landscape, when juxtaposed with Jimmie's life, calls into question myths about national patrimony that stem from Federation. Schepisi's expressionist cinematography engages audiences as both spectator and commentator in the Blacksmith/Governor story. This dialogue concludes with the suggestion that Jimmie's insanity is symptomatic of a society that uses Terra Nullius as a foundation, in the formation of it's national identity.' (Publication abstract)