Series 2 episode 3: Dracula On Film

This Box is a recording of a panel discussion held at the Irish Film Institute in Dublin as part of the Dublin: One City One Book initiative.

Over the course of three days, the IFI put on a number of Dracula-related films including Nosferatu (1922), Dracula (1931), Dracula (1958), Countess Dracula (1971), Blacula (1972) and Twilight (2008). As part of the programme, a panel of Dracula 'experts' was assembled for a free-admission public panel discussion on Dracula's cinematic legacy.

Thanks to the consent of the panel members we recorded the session for podcast, and release it here in its entirety.

Please note, owing to technical restrictions, certain sections (notably the audience questions) are of an inferior quality. We hope this doesn't hamper your enjoyment of the panel.

A written transcription will be made available in due course.

Dracula On Film Panel Discussion
recorded at the Irish Film Institute, Dublin on Sunday 19th April 2009.

Participants:

Brian J. Showers is the author of The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories (Mercier Press 2008) and Literary Walking Tours of Gothic Dublin (Nonsuch Ireland, 2006), which focuses on the lives of Dublin’s gothic literary icons Charles Maturin, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Bram Stoker. Brian is currently editing Haunted Histories: Stories of Spirit and Stone for Ex Occidente Press.

Paul Murray, a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, is a writer and diplomat. His first biography, A Fantastic Journey: The Life and Literature of Lafcadio Hearn (1993) won the 1995 Koizumi Yakumo Literary Prize in Japan and his second, From the Shadow of Dracula: A Life of Bram Stoker, was published by Jonathan Cape (London) in 2004. Mr Murray’s diplomatic postings include Ambassador of Ireland to Korea (1999–2004) and, currently, Irish Ambassador to the OECD and UNESCO in Paris.

Kim Newman is a novelist, critic and broadcaster. His fiction includes Anno Dracula, Life’s Lottery and The Man From the Diogenes Club. His non-fiction includes Nightmare Movies, Horror: 100 Best Books and BFI Classics studies of Cat People and Doctor Who. He is a contributing editor to Sight & Sound and Empire. He wrote and directed a short film Missing Girl, has written radio and TV documentaries (Radio 4’s Dicing With Dragons, Time Shift: A Study in Sherlock) and plays for radio (BBC online’s Mildew Manor, Radio 4’s Cry-Babies). johnnyalucard.com

Sorcha Ni Fhlainn recently completed her Doctorate in English in TCD, specialising in Postmodernism and Horror: Subjectivity in Vampire Narratives in Fiction, Culture, and Film 1974-2008. A regular contributor to the Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, she has edited two eBooks on Monsters, and Human Wickedness, and is currently editing a volume on Monstrosity for Inter-Disciplinary Press in Oxford, and a collection on the Back to The Future Trilogy for McFarland, North Carolina. Sorcha is also a lecturer, specialising in Gothic Studies, at the Centre for Talented Youth Ireland based in Dublin City University and associated with Johns Hopkins University in the United States.

Robert J.E. Simpson is a film historian based in Belfast, with particular interest in British cinema and the horror genre. He teaches film at Queen’s University Belfast’s Open Learning division and is a regular contributor to the QFT Education programme. He is currently writing a book about Hammer Films (forthcoming Telos Books) and is working on a PhD study of Exclusive Films at Trinity College Dublin.

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