HORROR DOC PREVIEWS IN SF, LA, DENVER
Making the film festival circuit this summer is the documentary Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street, which features Prof. Scahill as an authority on horror cinema and queer audiences. Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street opened in June at San Francisco's Frameline Film Festival, the world's first and largest queer film festival, now in its 43rd year. The film then made its Denver debut as the offical opening night film at CinemaQ Film Festival at SIE FilmCenter, a
INTERVIEW: THE AGE OF QUEER MEDIA
Prof. Scahill was approached this week by Georgia Voice, an LGBT news magazine out of Atlanta, to give his thoughts on the current landscape of queer representation in film and television. According to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), 2018 was a record-breaking year, as 8.8% of series regulars identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered. While these are encouraging trends, Dr. Scahill noted that genres like horror, action, and the superhero
DR. SCAHILL PRESENTS ON QUEER HORROR
This semester Dr. Scahill presented a talk on queer horror cinema before a screening of Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge. This sequel to the original 1984 film is considered to be "the gayest horror film ever made," with its narrative of a young man struggling with an inner monster that emerges when he's aroused by male classmates. In his pre-screening talk, Dr. Scahill examined the place of queer panic in horror cinema and offered insights into the film's curious
NEW ESSAY IN CINEMA JOURNAL!
Dr. Scahill's essay "The Reelness: Queer Film Festivals and Youth Media Training" is featured in the Fall 2017 issue of Cinema Journal, one of the most prestigious journals in the field of film studies and the publication of our largest professional organization. The piece is part of an "IN FOCUS" roundtable on "Youth Culture," and authors were asked to consider the role of visual media in the lives of young people. This essay continues Scahill's work on youth culture and que
Q&A: TANGERINE DIRECTOR SEAN BAKER
On December 5, director Sean Baker answered questions via Skype for Prof. Scahill's Film Genre class as they concluded a unit on the screwball comedy. His award-winning film Tangerine chronicles a day in the life of two transgender sex workers in L.A. using a hyper-saturated "pop vérité" style and caused a sensation at the Sundance Film Festival for being shot entirely on an iPhone 5. In the clip above, Baker addresses the political potential of both social realism and come
CLASS FILMED FOR HORROR FILM DOCUMENTARY
On April 4, Dr. Andrew Scahill was interviewed and his Horror Cinema class filmed for the upcoming documentary Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street. The film explores the curious queer afterlife of Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985), considered by many to “the gayest horror film ever made.” Part video essay, part historiography, part character investigation, the documentary talks to the filmmakers, fans, and its star, Mark Patton, who was wrestling with h
FEATURE INTERVIEW: REVOLTING CHILD BOOK
On October 29 2015, Dr. Scahill was featured in a five-page interview in Metro Weekly, DC's gay and lesbian newspaper. In the piece "Scary Movies: Gays Have a Special Dark Place in the Horror Canon," Dr. Scahill discussed his new book, the horror genre, The Exorcist Steps, and the unique relationship that gays and lesbians have to the genre of taboo-breaking and social upheaval. #interview #revoltingchild #book #feature #scarymovies #metroweekly #horror #queer #childhood #exo
NEW BOOK: THE REVOLTING CHILD
Dr. Scahill's book The Revolting Child in Horror Cinema: Youth Rebellion and Queer Spectatorship was released today from Palgrave Macmillan. Scahill argues that the “revolting child”—whose forms include the child with a dark secret (The Bad Seed), the child who transforms into a monster in adolescence (The Exorcist), or the child who forms a cabal of outcasts (Village of the Damned)—functions as a potent metaphor for queer youth. Drawing together film theory, queer theory, ch
