The Mary Shelley Symposium at the Stranger With My Face Horror Film Festival is a series of talks and discussions around genre and gender, featuring experts and academics, artists and filmmakers. The Symposium honours one of the greatest and most influential women in horror, the novelist Mary Shelley.
Many symposium events are free to attend, see individual event pages for details.
Saturday August 23, 12.00 pm – 1.00 pm
INTO THE WOODS: Fairytales and Beyond
Kris Erskine
Fairytales are all the rage these days, not just in horror but right across the entire mainstream spectrum.
Saturday August 23, 1.00 pm – 2.00 pm
THE GORE GORE GIRLS: Women in Horror (A Brief History)
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
When Carol Hanisch popularised the famous feminist war cry “the personal is political” in 1969, chances are the story of women in the horror film was not at the forefront of the ways she hoped the phrase would be used 45 years later.
Saturday August 23, 5:00-7:00 pm
ARCHITECTS OF FEAR
Shayne Armstrong, Shane Krause (Acolytes, 6 Miranda Drive, Bait 3D) and Ursula Dabrowsky (the ‘Family Demons’ trilogy) will explore their ideas on process and craft, inspiration, motivation, influences and the future of horror writing in Australia in a panel moderated by Tasmania’s Vicki Madden (The Kettering Incident).
Sunday August 24, 10:00-11:00 am
MAP OF TASMANIA: Female Subjectivity, Tasmanian Gothic and The Tale of Ruby Rose
Emily Bullock
This talk will discuss this little-known independent Tasmanian film in relation to the increasingly popular genre of Tasmanian Gothic and the centrality of female subjectivity.
Jessica Balanzategu
The uncontainable power of children’s culture has become a reoccurring preoccupation of recent supernatural horror films.
Sunday August 24, 12:00-1:00 pm
DARK DREAMINGS: In Conversation with Queenie Chan
Graphic novelist Queenie Chan discusses her influences and ideas about dark storytelling as it relates to genre and gender representations in her work.