Anti-Black Nightmares: Film Studies at Showroom

After over 100 years of film production, cinema has developed a rich history. We can learn a lot about society from films made in different periods of time, and watching and talking about them can be a great way to engage with the past. For this reason, Showroom Cinema regularly plays host to Film Studies courses, each comprised of four films and four lectures, on a variety of different interesting topics.

We are pleased to announce that our next Film Studies course in partnership with Sheffield Hallam University will be running this October and November, titled “Anti-Black Nightmares”, exploring the issue of race in the horror genre. The course will be taught by Dr Maisha Wester, Global Professor in the School of English, University of Sheffield.

Recent years have seen a rise in Black horror films and series, from Get Out (2017) to The Blackening (2023). These films are subversive within a contemporary culture plagued by anti-Black rhetoric and politics. Yet to really understand the innovation of these films, we need to consider the racial dynamics in horror films from earlier generations, as well as the ways writers and directors have pushed back against the conventions that have allowed anti-Blackness to thrive.

Anti-Black Nightmares begins on 11 October with White Zombie, a film from 1932 which shows the origins of the zombie movie in Haitian folklore, followed by the lecture “Jim Crow Terrors”.We then jump forward in time to 1992’s original Candyman and the lecture “Sympathy for the Devil”.

These first four weeks will examine the politics of anti-Blackness in US Horror film throughout the twentieth century, to consider how seemingly evolving narratives persistently reproduce the same ideas.

Heading into November, the course continues by exploring how anti-Blackness, and the population that invests in it, is a horror of its own. Going back in time to the 1968 zombie classic Night of the Living Dead, and accompanying lecture “Counterculture Nightmares”, the screenings will then come to anend with the Oscar-winning Get Out, an example of Black Horror beloved by contemporary audiences.

Following this opportunity to see the modern classic on the big screen once again, the closing lecture “Horror in the Age of Black Lives Matter” will heighten the experience further for Jordan Peele fans, renewing enjoyment of the groundbreaking film against the backdrop of those that came before it.

Tickets for the weekly Film Studies screening or lecture can be purchased individually, or discounted when you purchase a pass for the full course at: showroomworkstation.org.uk/anti-black-nightmares