[Commlist] Call for Papers: Cine-Excess 2023 International Film Festival & Conference - Raising Hell: Demons, Darkness and the Abject

We are delighted to announce that the Call for Papers for the 17^th 
annual /Cine-Excess /International Film Festival and Conference has just 
been released and can be found below. Entitled /Raising Hell: Demons, 
Darkness and the Abject, /the event runs from 18^th -27^th October 2023 
and includes an international conference with accompanying guest 
filmmakers, UK theatrical premieres and exclusive screenings.

**

**

*Call for Papers: /Cine-Excess/ 2023 International Film Festival & 
Conference*

*Raising Hell: Demons, Darkness and the Abject
​18^th – 27^th October 2023*

*Birmingham, UK/Online *

An international conference with accompanying guest filmmakers, UK 
theatrical premieres and exclusive screenings

*Featured Events include: /Hellraiser /—//An Unholy Reunion of Cenobites 
(further details forthcoming) *

*Live online Keynote Speaker: Professor Barbara Creed (University of 
Melbourne), marking the 30^th anniversary republication of /The 
Monstrous–Feminine./*


For its 2023 edition, Cine-Excess considers the cinematic, social and 
cultural significance of the possessed, supernatural and unclean body 
onscreen. In-keeping with the festival’s established mission to 
integrate academic and industrial film perspectives, this year’s theme 
of /Raising Hell: Demons, Darkness and the Abject/ focuses on landmark 
scholarly texts as well as anniversaries and restorations of cult cinema 
classics that deal with this subject.

*Barbara Creed’s* /The Monstrous–Feminine/, first published in 1993, 
swiftly became acknowledged as a ground-breaking text in the study of 
horror for its application of feminist and psychoanalytic theory and its 
foregrounding of Julia Kristeva’s concept of ‘abjection’. Thirty years 
on, Professor Creed is publishing a second edition of the book, with a 
new section entitled: ‘Revolt of the Monstrous-feminine embracing the 
Nonhuman’.  This new face of the monstrous-feminine is the topic of a 
live streamed Cine-Excess 2023 keynote lecture.

2023 also marks the 50^th anniversary of the mother of all devil child 
films, William Friedkin’s /The Exorcist/. An enormous box office success 
and cultural phenomenon, the film spawned an international wave of 
‘devil child’ imitations with their own social, cultural and 
gender-based sensibilities, whilst Friedkin and Warner Bros. have 
themselves continued to revisit and reissue the film in the intervening 
years. Autumn 2023 sees a 4K restoration return to theatres, and in 
anticipation of an uptick of interest in all things possessed, /The 
Exorcist/ rightfully features in the Cine-Excess 2023 call for papers.

Also returning in a 4K restoration this autumn is Clive Barker’s 
/Hellraiser/ (1987). One of the most distinctive and influential of all 
British cult horrors, with its seductive combination of intellectual 
provocation, shocking visuals and thematic abjection, the /Hellraiser/ 
universe continues to inspire fascination and adoration, most recently 
through a 2022 loose reboot of the first film. To celebrate the 
restoration of the cult classic, the festival will be profiling 
exclusive screenings of /Hellraiser/, with special guests to receive 
their Cine-Excess Innovator of Horror awards (further details to follow).

Beyond the example of /Hellraiser/, /Raising Hell: Demons, Darkness and 
the Abject /also draws in other nationally specific examples of the 
supernatural and subcultural from /The Wicker Man/ (which also 
celebrates its 50^th anniversary) to more contemporary international 
examples of the folk horror phenomenon. Additionally, this year’s 
conference theme also provides the platform to discuss classic and 
contemporary visions of the supernatural from the Global South, which 
themselves display important social, cultural, gender and regional concerns.

Accordingly, this year’s theme /Raising Hell: Demons, Darkness and the 
Abject/ invites participants to consider both classic and 
contemporaneous texts and consider their ongoing influence for both film 
audiences and cinema scholars. Proposals are therefore invited for 
individual papers or pre-constituted panels that consider case-studies 
within a range of differing contexts that relate to this year’s theme. 
We would particularly welcome contributions that focus on the following 
areas:

//

·/‘/Taste our pleasures!’: The Legacy and Influence of/Hellraiser/

·The Devil Inside Her: Witches and Wayward Women on Screen

·50 Years of Fear: New Perspectives on/The Exorcist/

·Supernatural Visions of the Global South

·National Traditions of the Abject Body on Screen

·Little Devils: Demonic Children on Screen

·New Visions of the Monstrous­­–Feminine

·‘He has his father’s eyes’: Parenthood and Demonic Children

·Raising Hell: Unruly Cult Auteurs as Unholy Creatives

·‘He chose you, honey! From all the women in the world to be the mother 
of his only living son!’: The Female as the Mid-Wife to the Devil

·Demonic Divas: Star Study Perspectives of Possession Performers

·‘If I die I’m going to haunt you myself’: Demonic Possession in an 
Online World

·The Power of the Box Office Compels You/: Exorcist /Clones in Context//

·Folklore Cinema and the Witch as Monstrous–Feminine

·‘Have these children never heard of Jesus?’: /The Wicker Man/ at 50

·‘The box. You opened it. We came’: /The Exorcist/ and /Hellraiser/ 
reborn in the multi-platform age

·Making Work for Idle Hands: The Devil in the Workplace

·Supernatural Small Towns of the Streamers:/Stranger Things/, /Fear 
Street/, /Sabrina/

·/From Fantasia to /Goosebumps/: The Demonic in Children’s Media/

·Are You Making it Move?: Rituals and Performance in Demonic Cinema

Over the past 17 years /Cine-Excess/ has developed a reputation as an 
inclusive and safe space in which to present new work around global cult 
film cultures. We welcome submissions from emerging and established and 
scholars, activists, film makers and community groups.

//

Please send a 300-word abstract and a short (one page) C.V. by *Friday 
25^th August 2023* to:

John Atkinson

Editorial Lead of /Cine-Excess/
(john.atkinson /at/ cine-excess.co.uk) <mailto:(john.atkinson /at/ cine-excess.co.uk)>

Professor Xavier Mendik
Director of /Cine-Excess/
(xavier.mendik /at/ cine-excess.co.uk) <mailto:(Xavier.Mendik /at/ cine-excess.co.uk)>

A final listing of accepted presentations will be released on *Thursday 
31^st August 2023.***

We will subsequently invite a limited number of participants to rework 
their papers for inclusion in the sixth edition of the Cine-Excess 
journal, for publication in spring 2024.

/Cine-Excess/2023 invites delegates to present either in person or 
online for this year’s conference, and participants should indicate 
their preference when submitting their conference proposal.

For further information visit: https://bit.ly/CECFP <https://bit.ly/CECFP>


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