[Commlist] Cine-Excess 2025: Reanimated! Reviving Cult Film's Dead Objects

*/Cine-Excess International Film Festival and Conference <bit.ly/CECFP>/*

Monday 20th October to Sunday 26th October 2025

*Online Conference*

“Reanimated! Reviving Cult Film’s Dead Objects”

*In-Person Symposium*

Friday 24th October | Birmingham, UK

*Guest of Honour*

Brian Yuzna

*Keynote Speaker*

Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes

FURTHER INDUSTRY GUESTS TO BE ANNOUNCED

Call for Papers

“IT’S ALIVE,” manically proclaims the mad scientist in James Whale’s 
/Frankenstein/ (1931), the source material which not only nuanced the 
Gothic but also gave birth to science fiction. And across the plentiful 
variations and imitations of this classic text and its themes, of 
course, body horror has given rise to affect our most primal fears and 
social conventions, setting the scene for 2025’s iteration of the 
/Cine-Excess/ International Film Festival and Conference.

This year, we celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Stuart Gordon’s 
/Re-Animator/ (1985), a quintessential cult classic that blends dark 
comedy and body horror to push the very boundaries of generic 
acceptability. The film was created in tandem with producer Brian Yuzna, 
and /Re-Animator/’s success would inspire later Stuart Gordon horror 
films such as /From Beyond/ (1986), whilst paving the way for Yuzna’s 
own directorial career, including /Society/ (1989), /Bride of 
Re-Animator/ (1990), and /Return of the Living Dead III/ (1993). As part 
of this year’s festival, we are delighted that /Re-Animator/’s legendary 
producer Brian Yuzna is scheduled to be joining in person to receive a 
Lifetime Achievement Award for his work on the film, whilst also 
receiving a posthumous award for the late Stuart Gordon.

/Re-Animator/is not the only body horror (or adjacent) film celebrating 
a milestone in 2025, however, with David Cronenberg’s /Shivers/ (1975) 
and /The Rocky Horror Picture Show/ (1975) both celebrating their 
fiftieth anniversaries, and George A. Romero’s Living Dead franchise 
marking the fortieth anniversary of /Day of the Dead/ (1985) and the 
twentieth anniversary of /Land of the Dead/ (2005).

Beyond the realm of body horror, 2025 also marks the fortieth 
anniversary of Robert Zemeckis’s /Back to the Future/ (1985), a 
Hollywood blockbuster hit that epitomises the mainstreamification of 
cult cinema. Just as the film harkens back to the 1950s, combined with a 
fandom that is fixed on the 1980s, /Back to the Future/ demonstrates the 
important role that nostalgia plays in the configuration of cult media, 
reanimating the past.

Anniversaries aside, the unprecedented critical and commercial success 
of Coralie Fargeat’s /The Substance/ (2024) has driven body horror to 
the forefront of knowing, mainstream visibility. In order to make sense 
of this phenomenon as well as other generic developments over the 
decades, we are delighted to welcome Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes as our 
keynote speaker. Dr Aldana Reyes is a founding member of the Manchester 
Centre for Gothic Studies, co-president of the International Gothic 
Association, and the author of such monographs as /Contemporary Body 
Horror/ (Cambridge University Press, 2024), /Gothic Cinema/ (Routledge, 
2020), and /Body Gothic: Corporeal Transgression in Contemporary 
Literature and Horror Film/ (University of Wales Press, 2014).

In addition to the emphasis on /Re-Animator/ and contemporary body 
horror, this year’s call for papers invites contributors to consider 
case studies within an even wider range of different contexts that 
relate to the themes of “reanimating” and “reviving” cult film’s 
traditions, conventions, and (analogue) technologies. We would therefore 
welcome 20-minute papers or pre-constituted panels on the following topics:

  * /Re-Animator/at 40: Critical Rejuvenations of the 1985 Cult Classic
  * Surgical Siblings: Reanimating the Perverse Cinema of Brian Yuzna
    and Stuart Gordon
   * From Frankenstein to Frank-N-Furter: 50 Years of /The Rocky Horror
    Picture Show/
  * “Old Flesh Is Erotic Flesh”: /Shivers/, Cronenbergian Body Horror
    and Its Legacy
  * My Body, My Trauma: Contemporary Feminist Revisions of the Unsightly
  * Back from the Box: Super 8, Videotape and the Contemporary Lure of
    Dead Media
  * The Power of Love: /Back to the Future/, Nostalgia and the Cult
    Hollywood Blockbuster
  * More than Dead Objects: Reclaiming the “Victim” Paradigm in Cult and
    Horror Media
  * “The Dead Will Walk the Earth”: George A. Romero’s Living Dead and
    Zombie Media
  * Remakes and Reboots, Reimaginings and Requels: Reviving Cult and
    Horror Franchises
  * Again and Again: Repeat Viewing and Replay Culture in Cult and
    Horror Media
  * “Sleep All Day, Party All Night”: Undead Evolutions in Vampire Media
   * From Script to Screen: Recovering the Screen- and Teleplay as Dead
    Object
  * Magnifying the Maligned: Resuscitating the Neglected Texts of Cult
    and Horror Media
  * Apparitions of the Past: Ghosts in Cult and Horror Media
  * Weird Science: Science Fiction and the Gothic Tradition
  * Cult of the Dead: Posthumous Recognition(s) in Cult and Horror Media
  * Historical Mediations: Repeating the Past in Cult and Horror Media
  * Animating Cult and Horror Media: Animation, Art and Creative Technique
  * Resuscitating Dead Careers: Acting Comebacks and Cult Lookalikes on
    Screen
  * Digging the Past: Unearthing the Hidden Histories of Cult and Horror
    Media

/Cine-Excess/2025 invites proposals for *either* the online conference 
*or* in-person symposium. *Participants should indicate their preference 
when submitting their proposal.*

The online conference is expected to run for a minimum of two days on 
the week beginning Monday 20th October, with *registration fees of £100 
/ £50 (concessions)*. Registration fees include virtual attendance at 
the conference, related streamed screenings and filmmaker talks.

The in-person symposium will be limited to a one-day event in 
Birmingham, UK on Friday 24th October, with *registration fees of £150 / 
£100 (concessions)*. Registration fees include in-person attendance at 
the symposium and related cinema screenings, as well as access to the 
online components of /Cine-Excess/ 2025.

Since 2007, /Cine-Excess/ has developed and nurtured 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 
scholars, activists, filmmakers, and community groups.

Please send a 300-word abstract and a short bio by *Friday 15th August 
2025* to:

John Atkinson, Editorial Lead of /Cine-Excess/

(john.atkinson /at/ cine-excess.co.uk) <mailto:(john.atkinson /at/ cine-excess.co.uk)>

Dr Daniel Sheppard, Associate Director of /Cine-Excess/

(daniel.sheppard /at/ bcu.ac.uk) <mailto:(daniel.sheppard /at/ bcu.ac.uk)>

Professor Xavier Mendik, Director of /Cine-Excess/

(xavier.mendik /at/ cine-excess.co.uk) <mailto:(xavier.mendik /at/ cine-excess.co.uk)>

Final decisions will be communicated no later than *Friday 22nd August 
2025*.

We will subsequently invite a limited number of participants to rework 
their papers for inclusion in the eighth edition of the /Cine-Excess/ 
journal, set for publication in 2026.

For more information on this year’s /Cine-Excess/, visit our website 
<bit.ly/CECFP>.


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