February is the Cruellest Month (she says)
January 17th, 2012 at 19:57
Okay, you won’t have seen this coming. I’m going to be a guest speaker at a ‘women in horror’ film festival in February. “Stranger With My Face” is the first of its kind for Hobart, and will be taking place around Salamanca Place & the Peacock Theatre from 17-19 February.
Deriving its name from the novel by Lois Duncan, the festival explores themes of the the shadow self, tapping into archetypes like the evil twin and the mad woman in the attic.
Mainstream film continues to present its female monsters as exotic, the ‘other’ (the ‘monstrous-feminine’ as Barbara Creed would have it), failing to recognise that this doesn’t represent the perspective of at least half of the audience. Where are the stories for women about the monster within? Where are the stories about dangerous women that are not ‘mysterious’ and ‘unknowable’… because they’re us? For that matter, where are the female Freddy Kruegers, Jasons and Candymans? Yes, slasher films have been known to feature strong female protagonists, but this is just one subgenre…and it’s not enough.
By contrast, female novelists have been delving into the dark side of their own natures for centuries… from Mary Shelley to the Brontës, to Daphne du Maurier and Shirley Jackson. Stranger With My Face looks to literary as well as cinematic traditions, understanding that one enriches the other.
Briony and I only met formally a couple of weeks ago, but I think we instantly recognised something in each other – that whole kindred spirit thing. We’ve both been having the same conversation, the same argument, embracing such similar themes and issues both with our creative work and with the business side of that work, and yet in two separate fields.
I was a little unsure at first about speaking at a festival about horror, but as Kirstyn McDermott thoroughly kicked my butt about in the last year, I do ACTUALLY like horror fiction, I just tend to like it when it’s feminist and awesome, and just because a lot of it isn’t feminist or awesome doesn’t mean I should dismiss the genre as a whole. It just means I need to look harder at it. Especially when I’ve just finished a trilogy which has a whole lot of horror tropes in it, along with the magic, the politics, the frocks and the smut…
And let’s face it, the Creature Court isn’t the first or last work I’ve written that can be looked at through a horror lens.
[also, I LOVED Lois Duncan as a kid, her books are the quintessential teen chillers with girl heroes]
So yes! I will be giving a talk entitled Genre and gender in our own landscape – From Australian ‘dark weird’ to Tasmanian Gothic which will not be entirely about how everyone needs to go read Kaaron Warren, Margo Lanagan and Kirstyn McDermott short stories and then make fabulous indie films about them, but it will sort of be about that. I’ll also talk about the emotional fallout from writing a novel which brings krakens and devastating god explosions to my home town, and probably some other stuff. I’m excited!
So you can come along to my talk at 4pm on Sunday 19 February [at the Peacock Theatre] for a gold coin donation, which would be fabulous, but I recommend all Hobarters check out the programme as a whole because there’s some exciting films being shown and some great seminars/workshops on topics as diverse as how to make your own blood & gore special effects, and how to write horror/thriller for the stage.
January 18th, 2012 at 10:44 am
You can talk a reasonable amount about those fabulous indie films, of course! Do you think they’d like a viewing of A Positive?
January 18th, 2012 at 10:45 am
Sorry, that was me!
January 18th, 2012 at 1:41 pm
That sounds awesome. I hope I can make it!
January 18th, 2012 at 2:27 pm
Oh Kaaron, do get in touch with them! Briony was looking for more films by women, I think, and that would be a great one to include.
January 18th, 2012 at 5:15 pm
Will do, Tansy!
January 21st, 2012 at 8:55 am
[...] with My Face – Women in Horror film festival in Hobart, Tasmania – 17-19 February Tansy’s book launch for Reign of Beasts (Creature Court Book Three) on 2 February at Hobart [...]
January 22nd, 2012 at 4:55 am
[...] with My Face – Women in Horror film festival in Hobart, Tasmania – 17-19 February Tansy’s book launch for Reign of Beasts (Creature Court Book Three) on 2 February at Hobart [...]