Every horror fan can name a list of horror classics directed by men. Female directors are sadly underrepresented in our collective horror memory. To turn things around, film historian Heidi Honeycutt watched thousands of horror movies and spoke to hundreds of creators, journalists and curators. The result is I Spit On Your Celluloid: The History of Women Directing Horror Movies, a book that sees Honeycutt explore the political and cultural framework in which female-created horror took shape. The book discusses a variety of significant factors: from the women’s rights movement, the end of the Hays Code and the deterioration of the Hollywood studio system to the rise of new distribution models, the revolution of digital cinema, the role of social media and new thoughts on gender and identity. In addition to traditional narrative features, Honeycutt also writes about shorts, documentaries, animation, pornography and experimental films.
Heidi Honeycutt is an American film journalist, festival programmer and film historian specialized in horror. She’s a co-founder of the Etheria Film Festival in Los Angeles and writes for a number of horror magazines. At Imagine 2024, Honeycutt will be interviewed by Patricia Pisters, professor of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam and author of New Blood in Contemporary Cinema: Women Directors and the Poetics of Horror (2022).
