Call for Papers Edited Volume: The Films of Jess Franco

Call for Papers

Edited Volume: The Films of Jess Franco

Editors: Antonio Lázaro-Reboll (University of Kent) and Ian Olney (York College of Pennsylvania)

Jesús “Jess” Franco (1930-2013) is one of the most prolific and madly inventive filmmakers in the history of cinema.  His remarkable career spanned more than half a century and produced almost two hundred films shot in Spain and across Europe.  He is best known as the director of jazzy, erotically-charged horror movies featuring mad scientists, lesbian vampires, and women in prison, but dabbled in a multitude of genres from comedy to science-fiction to pornography.  Although he made his career in the ghetto of low-budget exploitation cinema, he managed to create a body of work that is deeply personal, frequently political, and surprisingly poetic.  Franco’s offbeat films command a devoted cult following; they have even developed a mainstream audience in recent years, thanks to their release on DVD and Blu-Ray.  To date, however, they have received relatively little scholarly attention.  The Films of Jess Francoseeks to address this neglect by bringing together original essays on Franco and his movies written from a variety of different theoretical perspectives by noted scholars around the world.  Ultimately, its aim is to encourage a reassessment of this critically undervalued director and his significant contributions to popular European cinema.

The editors of this proposed volume invite original essays on any aspect of Jess Franco’s work; all theoretical approaches are welcome.  Possible topics might include:

·         Franco as Horror Auteur

·         Gender and/or Race in Franco’s Films

·         Queer Franco

·         The Franco Soundtrack

·         Franco’s Non-Horror Films

·         Late Franco (Films of the 1990s and 2000s)

·         Franco as Spanish Filmmaker

·         Franco as Transnational Filmmaker

·         Franco and the Art Film

·         Franco’s Influences

·         Sex and Eroticism in Franco’s Films

·         Franco and Film Adaptation

·         Performance and Stardom in Franco’s Films

·         The Politics of Franco’s Films

·         The Cult of Franco

·         Franco’s Legacy

Please send abstracts of 500 words to Antonio Lázaro-Reboll (a.lazaro-reboll@kent.ac.uk) and Ian Olney (iolney@ycp.edu) by July 30, 2014.  Final essays will be due January 30, 2015.  Essays should be 6,000-8,000 words in length and should follow MLA guidelines for citation and documentation.