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Offscreen Film Festival Presents:
SYMPOSIUM: 1980’s REAGANITE CINEMA
Each year Offscreen Film Festival focuses on a specific cult film subgenre. This year’s thematic selection highlights the Cannon film studio. Next to the film program, Offscreen organises a symposium on ‘Reaganite cinema’ and the role of the body, violence and action heros in 1980s cinema.
The Cannon film studio, run by Israelian cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, is synonymous with the eighties – a time of superficial excess and bravado, rampant consumerism and neoliberalism. President Ronald Reagan like none other symbolises the political zeitgeist and Cannon Films almost seems to be the official propaganda service of the White House, with All American Heroes like Chuck Norris, Charles Bronson and Sylvester Stallone defending the Free World from the communist “Evil Empire”. Ninjas, bodybuilders and bazookas take over the cinema screens, and JCVD gets moulded into a Hollywood film star.
By way of a symposium at Cinema Nova, we want to place the output of Cannon Films in the broader cultural and historical context of American film production during the presidency of Ronald Reagan (“Reaganite Cinema”) where action heros rescue the world and the cult of the body reigns supreme.
Speakers
Steve Jones (Northumbria University) - Hard body, cold heart: The body in 80s cinema
Russ Hunter (Northumbria University) -Chuck Norris doesn’t call the wrong number, you answer the wrong phone: The 80s action star and Reaganism
Jonathan Mack (Northumbria University) - Weapons of Mass Nostalgia: Action, Spectacle and the American Hero in Reaganite Cinema
Dr. Sarah Ralph (University of East Anglia) - Re-masculating the hero? The curious case of the 80s female action star
Laurent Vanclaire (Université Libre de Bruxelles) - Wake me up, I'm scared: horror movies in the 80s
Practical:
Saturday 14 March 13:00 – 17:00
Cinema Nova, rue Arenberg 3, 1000 Brussels
Entrance is free, please register at [log in to unmask]