Cine-Excess 2020 Online
Representations as Weapons: Cult Film and the Politics of Resistance​
4th - 8th November 2020

Organised in association with Birmingham City University and the Black Sands Educational Project
Online conference and streamed festival and screening season

Cine-Excess 2020 represents the 14th annual international film festival and conference on global cult film cultures. The event is being hosted in associated with Birmingham City University and the Black Sands Educational Project. It brings together international filmmakers, critics and scholars for a series of talks, interviews and UK premieres/exclusive screenings.

Guests of Honour

Guests of Honour to Cine-Excess include screen legend Pam Grier (Jackie Brown, Coffy, Scream Blacula Scream). Pam will be discussing her career and linking it to key issues of diversity as raised by this year’s theme of ‘Representations as Weapons: Cult Film and the Politics of Resistance’.

Pam Grier will be conducting a live Streamed Interview and Q&A and receiving her Cine-Excess Lifetime Achievement Award on Friday 6th November between 6.30-8.30pm UK time.
Alongside Pam Grier, we are delighted to welcome back the contemporary horror filmmaking duo Jennifer and Sylvia Soska (Rabid [2019] and American Mary). Having received their Cine-Excess award at the 2019 event, the inspirational Soska sisters return to the festival in their new role as BCU Fellows in International Cinema Practices.

They will be judging the Tales of Terror MA Film competition between Thursday 5th November between 5pm and 6pm UK time.  

Representations as Weapons: Cult Film and the Politics of Resistance
The Cine-Excess 2020 Online Conference

Poster design courtesy of Richard Anderson
Running throughout the daytime slots of Cine-Excess 2020 is the three-day conference Representations as Weapons: Cult Film and the Politics of Resistance. This year’s Cine-Excess conference is presented in collaboration with the Black Sands Educational Project, which seeks to educate UK based BAME artists, filmmakers and audiences about the subversive potential that surrounds black representations in cult and marginal cinema formats.

The focus of the Black Sands project helps inform this year’s conference theme: Representations as Weapons: Cult Film and the Politics of Resistance. This theme considers the extent to which the struggle for representations by various ethnicities, genders and divergent groups is enacted through a range of classic and contemporary cult film genres.

This focus on representations as weapons will consider the complex issues of gender and racial diversity as embodied by the cult image, whilst also exploring a range of international traditions, directors and performers whose work can be seen as existing at the borders of cinematic excess and political struggle.

The Revolution Will Be Televised: The Cine-Excess 2020 Online Screening Season

To compliment this year’s festival focus, the Cine-Excess 2020 screening season is entitled The Revolution Will Be Televised, and considers how the struggle for representation by various ethnicities, genders and divergent groups is being as enacted by a new generation of filmmakers whose work explores complex issues of diversity whilst also negotiating wider global cult film trends.  

The screening season includes UK film premieres, exclusive screenings and two upcoming releases from the new Cine-Excess Digital Film Channel.

Please note, films are viewable only within the UK, except where explicitly noted.