Cine-Excess III: The Third International Conference on Global Cult Film

Thursday 30th April 2009 and Saturday 2nd May 2009

Cine-Excess III was the biggest annual international conference and festival on global cult film culture to date. The event took place between Thursday 30th April 2009 and Saturday 2nd May 2009 at Odeon Covent Garden and the Curzon Soho Cinema.

Cine-Excess III Guests of Honour
Italy’s iconic horror legend Dario Argento (Director of Deep Red, Suspiria, Tenebrae, Opera and Sleepless) and his long-time composer Claudio Simonetti (of rock-supergroup ‘Goblin’ fame) were Guests of Honour at the event, and both received Cine-Excess Lifetime Achievement Awards for their work on the groundbreaking supernatural thriller Suspiria (1977) at a special ceremony/on-stage panel discussion on Friday 1st May 2009.

Cine-Excess III also hosted a visit by Indie feminist cult director Anna Biller. The Los Angeles Times have defined Biller as an an exclusive screening of her acclaimed new film Viva at Cine-Excess III at as well as participating in an on-stage discussion on the topic of women in sexploitation cinema.

Undead And Dead Central: The Cine-Excess III Conference
Expanding on the conference components of previous years, Cine-Excess III  staged its first themed conference Beyond Life: The Undead in Global Cult Media between 30th April -2nd may 2009.  ‘Beyond Life’ examined representations, cults, fandoms and different cultural traditions surrounding zombies, vampires, mummies and other undead from a range of different approaches and disciplines as well as in different media - film, TV, games, internet and comics.

Beyond Life: The Undead in Global Cult Media featured two high profile keynote addresses by Associate Professor Jeffrey Sconce (author of the influential article ‘Trashing the Academy’ [1995] and Editor of Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Politics [2007]) and Professor Chris Jenks (author of noted volumes including Transgression [2003] and Subculture: the Fragmentation of the Social [2004]).

Beyond Life: The Undead in Global Cult Media also featured over 40 talks, panel discussions and plenary sessions by leading critics and theorists including Stacey Abbott, Michael Ahmed, Costas Constandinides, Ian Cooper, Emma Dyson, Darren Elliott, Robbie Edmonstone, Rachel Freedman, Basil Glynn, Kim Toft Hansen, Julia Hedstrom, Daniel Hickin, Beth Johnson, Steve Jones, Lorna Jowett,  Tanya Krzywinska, Adam Locks, Daniel Martin, Mariano Paz, Alison Peirse, Steve Rawle, Dolores Tierney, Glenn Ward and Andy Willis.

Distributing Excess: The New Nouveaux Pictures / Cine-Excess DVD Label
Cine-Excess III also featured the launch of the new    i DVD label, which has been given extensive backing from American cult icon Roger Corman, a previous guest at the event. Having offered Cine-Excess the exclusive UK rights to his extensive New Horizons studio catalogue, Cine-Excess joined forces with leading arthouse distributor Nouveaux Pictures to create the UK’s first DVD label for both the commercial consumer and the cult film studies educational sector.

The Nouveaux Pictures / Cine-Excess label launched in May 2009 and features over 30 American and European cult film classics alongside exclusive new releases. Some of the future releases on the label include Viva (Anna Biller), Not of This Earth (Roger Corman), Grand Theft Auto (Ron Howard) and Suspiria (Dario Argento). Cine-Excess III featured a special panel session entitled Distributing (Cine-)Excess  on the label, as well as an exclusive screening of its first release: Viva.

Cine-Excess Screenings: Just Keep Telling Yourself "It's Only A Film Festival, It's Only A Film Festival"
As the reputation of Cine-Excess continues to grow, the event is able to secure exclusive screenings and UK theatrical premieres of the biggest cult movies on the scene. Cine-Excess III featured our most high-profile screening schedule to date. Screening highlights included:

Viva (Anna Biller, 2007): Cult, campy and carnal! Viva is the acclaimed new retro sexploitation epic created by Indie feminist director Anna Biller. This contemporary homage to the classic sixties sexploitation extravaganzas made famous by directors such as Russ Meyer, Doris Wishman and Radley Metzger screened on Thursday 30th April at 9pm.

Deadgirl (Marcel Sarmiento/ Gadi Harel, 2008): Slacker grunge meets Gothic romance in this genuinely unnerving undead flick. When two disaffected college teens discover a dead but desirable female zombie chained to a bed in an abandoned hospital, their darkest desires spark a tragic chain reaction that engulfs the entire campus community. This exclusive Cine-Excess pre-release preview screened on Friday 1st May at 2pm.

The House By The Cemetery (Lucio Fulci, 1981): Undead, uncut and unashamed! One of the most notorious ‘video nasties’ of the 1980s gained first uncut theatrical screening in over 28 years, courtesy of Cine-Excess and Arrow Films. Directed by infamous Italian splatter icon Lucio Fulci, the film transposes the theme of Romero’s urban undead into a domestic New England setting. This undead shocker screened on Friday 1st May at 9pm.

The Last House On The Left (Dennis Iliadis, 2009) (Exclusive UK Theatrical Premiere): Masters of horror Wes Craven and Sean Cunningham revisit their landmark film that launched Craven’s directing career and influenced decades of horror films to follow: The Last House on the Left.  Bringing one of the most notorious thrillers of all time to a new generation, they produce the story that explores how far two ordinary people will go to exact revenge.  This exclusive UK theatrical premiere courtesy of Universal Studios took place on Saturday 2nd May at 12 noon.

Zombie Virus On Mulberry Street (Jim Mickle, 2006): Bringing the Cine-Excess III screening line-up to a close, was an exclusive Momentum Films preview of Jim Mickle’s recent Indiewood undead shocker. When rabid rats infect the inhabitants of a condemned New York housing project, a small group of survivors must band together to defeat the monstrous threat of the undead and the monstrously undefined forces of the American military. This exclusive screening took place on Saturday 2nd May at 2009.

Dario Argento and Claudio Simonetti at Cine-Excess III (Photograph courtesy of Claudio Simonetti and Shintaro Taketani).