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"Born
to Be Bad: Trash Cinema from the 1960s and 70s"
Conference and Film Festival
May 17 -19, 2002
University of California, Berkeley |
Keynote speaker:
Eric Schaefer
Emerson College, Boston
Author of "Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!": A History of
Exploitation Film, 1919-1959 (Duke University Press, 1999).
Guest: Xavier Mendik
Director of the Cult
Film Archive in Northampton, UK
Whether they are low-budget films that have found a life as
auctioned and traded bootlegs, high-profile successes that have fallen into
second-run obscurity, or something in between, Trash films have left their
mark on a different type of film history and writing. However these films
have come to be defined ("trash," "cult,"
"exploitation," etc.), there is no doubt that they have had an
effect on us and have led us down some unusual paths. This three-day
international conference honors Trash films and the activities surrounding
them.
Conference and Film
Festival Schedule:
Conference at The Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall, on the
UC Berkeley Campus
Films at the Pacific Film Archive (2575
Bancroft Ave. On campus facing Bancroft at Bowditch St.)
Friday, May 17, 2002:
Films at The Pacific Film Archive
7:00 pm
Color Me Shameless (1967)
and Corruption
of the Damned (1965) George Kuchar
Two throbbing mid-sixties extravaganzas of lust and lunacy from George
Kuchar, the low-rent Douglas Sirk of the Bronx.
9:00 pm Color
Me Blood Red (1965) Herschell Gordon Lewis
Gore guru Herschell Gordon Lewis's splatter-satire profiles a demented
painter on the bleeding edge of the beatnik avant-garde.
Saturday, May 18, 2002:
The Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall
8:30 am Coffee and Pastries
9:00 am Opening Remarks
Tamao Nakahara (University of California at Berkeley)
9:30-11:00 am Panel
I NY Trash
Joan Hawkins (Indiana
University at Bloomington)
"Trash and Transgression: Gross-Out Aesthetics and the Late 70s
Avant-garde"
Ara Osterweil (University of California at
Berkeley)
"Hootchie Kootchie Kuchar: George and Mike's Trash Homage to
Hollywood"
Dan Leopard (University of Southern
California)
"Blood Red Empire: Herschell Gordon Lewis, Andy Warhol, and 'Slash and
Stasis' Cinema"
11:00 am-12:30 pm Panel
II Sexploitation + Beyond
Melissa MacDonald (McMaster University, Canada)
"Twilight Tales of the Third Sex: The Familiar Spirit of Lesbian Pulp
Films"
Verena Mund (Feminale e.V., International
Women's Film Festival, Koeln, Germany)
"Stephanie Rothman: Feminist Filmmaker of Sexploitation Comedies"
Joe A. Thomas (Clarion University of
Pennsylvania)
"When Trash was Hip: Situating Deep Throat and Porno-Chic"
12:30-2:00 pm Lunch
Reception
2:00-3:30 pm Panel
III Monstrous Sex
Xavier Mendik (Cult
Film Archive, University College Northampton, UK)
"Monstrous Sex: Horror, Eroticism and Cult Constructions of the 'Other'
in the Black Emanuelle Films"
Tamao Nakahara (University
of California at Berkeley)
"Barred Nuns: Italian Nunsploitation Films"
Steven Schneider (New York University)
"Mixed Blood Couples: Interracial Union in the Blaxploitation Horror
Film"
3:30-5:00 pm Keynote
Address
Eric Schaefer (Emerson College)
"Sexploitation, Storefronts, and Sixteen: The Practice of Trash
Historiography"
Films at the Pacific Film Archive
7:30 pm Agony
of Love (1966)
William Rotsler
Introduced by Eric Schaefer.
A bored, buxom housewife takes up a profitable hobby in this sexploitation
psychodrama. "Pure silicone-powered poetry."-Steve Seid
9:30 pm
The Student Nurses (1970) Stephanie Rothman
Stephanie Rothman in Person.
Nurses get an education in bedside manner in Rothman's exploitation
classic-T&A with a feminist twist.
Sunday, May 19, 2002:
The Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall
9:00 am Coffee and Pastries
9:30 -11:00 am Panel
IV Guns, Wheels, & The Law
Harry M. Benshoff (University
of North Texas)
"Sexual and Textual Ambiguity in The Gay Deceivers"
Bill Osgerby (University
of North London and University of Leicester)
"Sleazy Riders: Exploitation, 'Otherness' and Transgression in the 1960s
Biker Movie"
Timothy Campbell (Cornell University)
"Metropolitan Traumas: The Poliziesco and the Experience of
Modernity"
11:00 am-1:00 pm
Panel V Distribution,
Exhibition, & Reception
Ernest Mathijs (University
of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK)
"Born/Raised to be Bad: The Reception of (Belgian) Trash Cinema"
Jon Kraszewski (Indiana University at
Bloomington)
"Recontextualizing the Historical Reception of Blaxploitation:
Articulations of Class, Black Nationalism, and Anxiety in the Genre's
Advertisements"
Amy Abugo Ongiri (University
of California at Riverside)
"Bruce Lee in the Ghetto Connection: Blaxploitation, Kung Fu Theater and
Black Spectatorship on the Margins"
Kevin J. Heffernan (Southern Methodist University)
"Musclemen, Moon Maidens, and Masterpieces: Trash Films and Feature Film
Syndication in Sixties Television"
1:00-2:00 pm Lunch
2:00-3:00 pm Collector's
Panel
Xavier Mendik (Cult
Film Archive, University College Northampton, UK) will speak on the
Cult Film Archive.
Ernest Mathijs (University
of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK) will speak on Alterimage, a new journal
of cult and popular cinema.
Elliot Lavine (Programmer
of the Roxie Cinema, San Francisco) will the join the conversation on
programming cult/trash films.
3:00 -4:30 pm Response
Session
Participants:
Eric Schaefer (Emerson
College)
Xavier Mendik (Cult
Film Archive, University College Northampton, UK) on his recent anthology,
Unruly Pleasures: The Cult Film and its Critics.
Linda Williams (University
of California at Berkeley)
Steven Schneider (New York University)
Tamao Nakahara (University
of California at Berkeley)
4:30 pm Closing
Remarks
Film
at the Pacific Film Archive
5:30 pm
Welcome Home, Brother Charles aka Soul
Vengeance (1975) Jamaa Fanaka
An ex-con seeks "soul vengeance" using a very unusual weapon in
this Blaxploitation epic set on the mean streets of Watts.
The conference is free and open to the public. To purchase tickets for the
films, please contact the PFA
box office: 510-642-5249. For more information or special access needs,
please call 510-527-6915 in advance.
 The evening films will be accompanied
by a selection of exploitation trailers
(courtesy of Joel Shepard of the Yerba Buena Center for
the Arts) and a large assortment of cult film books will
be on sale throughout the weekend. (Please note that this is for a fundraiser
and will be CASH ONLY).
"Born to Be Bad" is organized by the Graduate Film Working Group (a
Townsend Center Working Group and an ASUC-sponsored Student Group). The event
was made possible with generous contributions by the Film Studies Program,
the ASUC, The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, the Consortium
for the Arts, and the Italian Studies Department, and with the cooperation of
Steve Seid and the Pacific Film Archive.
ATTENTION SPEAKERS! Please visit the Speakers’ Page for instructions and travel information.
Other interested parties, please contact Tamao to take advantage of
the UC hotel rates.
Contact Information:
Tamao Nakahara
Department of Italian Studies
6303 Dwinelle, #2620
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-2620
phone: 510-527-6915
email: TAMAO@socrates.berkeley.edu
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