Subverting the Senses: The New Cine-Excess eJournal Launches with a Special Issue on Cult Controversies 

The new Cine-Excess eJournal will bring together leading film critics and theorists alongside international film directors and icons to discuss debates and traditions of global cult film activity. The journal will be peer-reviewed by an esteemed panel of advisors from film and media theory and industry, whose profiles can be found on the eJournal Panel page.

The special launch issue of the Cine-Excess eJournal is entitled Subverting the Senses: The Politics and Poetics of Excess and will be edited by Mikita Brottman and John Mercer. The launch issue focuses on the theme of the controversial cult image in its political, historical and aesthetic contexts. With the resurgence of critical interest in the 1980s ‘video nasties’, as well as whole new generation of films being subject to official state control, the cult image is now becoming a crucial index between the censor and the censored. In order to explore the phenomenon fully, contributions to the launch issue considers a range of controversial cult case-studies,  with the creators of these unsettling images commenting directly on these critical interpretations. Indicative contents for the Subverting the Senses: The Politics and Poetics of Excess include:

  • Spaghetti Splatter: Controversial Cowboys Reappraised   
  • Last Screenplay on the Left: Cult Controversies Reborn
  • New Audiences on the Edge of the Park: Cult Consumers of Celluloid Controversy
  • Traces of Death: Online Re-Mediations of Pseudo Snuff Classics  
  • Rape, Revenge and Railtrack: European Violation Narratives
  • Eastern European Excess: Serbian Cult Controversies
  • Mad Doctors, Human Experiments: The Human Centipede Franchise 
  • Banned Bunnies: S/M Controversies and the Arthouse Aesthetic

Alongside cult director and icon responses to the above topics the launch issue will also feature a full round up of related conferences and festivals in the arena of ‘excess’.    
An American Cult Filmmaker in London: John Landis on stage with Cine-Excess Organiser Xavier Mendik addresses the conference audience.
The Bunny Game (2010)