This course will examine Joe D’Amato’s body-centred films within the context of Italian cinema, the paracinematic, and genre studies. We will focus on what I call D’Amato’s “Mondo Realist” films, made within a very short period between 1975-1979. D’Amato’s films bridge Neo Realism and the Mondo film, which continue to be understood in almost mutually exclusive terms in film theory. His films offer a way to open up these categories through the embodied and sensual experiences of the porn and horror genres.
Films: Emanuelle and Françoise (1975); Emanuelle in America (1977); Buio Omega (1979).
Born in Montreal, Mario is a “monster kid” who teaches courses on genre cinema, grotesque traditions, and monster ethics in the Humanities department of John Abbott College. He began to watch monster movies at the age of 9, staying up to watch Hammer films on late-night television. He has been an independent filmmaker all his life beginning with his first super-8 film, ONE DARK NIGHT, which he shot in his parents’s back yard. His films combine a love of silent cinema, “exploitation films,” the horror genre, and attractions-based sensibilities. He is also a programmer and coordinator at the Montreal Underground Film Festival. He completed his PhD at the University of Toronto, and is presently finishing a book linked to the history of the Parisian Grand-Guignol theatre, entitled SINISTER TABLEAUX: GRAND-GUIGNOL CINEMA, CORPOREALITY AND THE SENSES. He has published articles on the Grand-Guignol and cinema in the journal HORROR STUDIES (5.1), and in the book, RECOVERING 1940s HORROR: TRACES OF A LOST DECADE (2015), for which he is a co-editor. He is also publishing an article on Jean Rollin for the book, GLOBAL FEAR: INTERNATIONAL HORROR DIRECTORS (Intellect Press, 2016). He is an occasional writer for the Canadian horror genre magazine RUE-MORGUE.
