(Art by Dan Madden)

The University at Albany’s Writing and Critical Inquiry Program announces our sixth-annual Film Festival and Lecture Series, an interdisciplinary, student- and community-centered public humanities program that generates conversations and cultivates relationships across campus and Capital District communities. Each year, we offer a selection of culturally diverse films, lectures, discussions, and celebrations surrounding a relevant theme pulled from popular culture and global cinema. Through various modes of engagement, we foster critical inquiry into real-world concerns through world-class scholarship, community partnerships, and experiential education. We aim to expand academic discourse beyond the classroom; create various spaces where the public can engage in conversation, collaborative learning, and reflection; and help students build deep connections to the university, the city of Albany, the humanities, and their intellectual resilience.

The 2021 Festival explores one of the world’s most popular and enduring images: the Vampire. Its folklore comes to us from almost every continent and has inspired hundreds of films from around the globe, not to mention novels, short stories, plays, TV shows, fine arts, comic books, and more. Because it is so universal, the vampire has provided a powerful metaphor for prescient matters from Imperialism to the AIDS pandemic, BLM to #MeToo, arts and immortality to the death and decay of affect. As Bram Stoker scholar Nina Auerbach has said, “every age embraces the vampire that it needs.” In this current age of cultural reckoning, resilience, and rebirth, the vampire comes to symbolize our individual and collective trauma and our strength as we rise to meet the new challenges that face us.

*All proceeds from the 2021 Vampire Film Festival will benefit the American Red Cross of Northeastern New York. To help them do the amazing work they do, the WCI Film Festival and Lecture Series, in partnership with the UAlbany Red Cross Club, will host a blood drive on October 22 from 10am-4pm in the UAlbany Campus Center room 116.

Find out more about the American Red Cross of Northeastern New York, including how you can donate, at the following link: Red Cross.  

**This event is free and open to the public.

Content Warning:

Although many of them are physically beautiful, please be aware that the behavior of vampires can sometimes be quite hideous. Many of the films you will see this weekend are rated R, and with good reason: they might include physical and sexual violence, gore, adult language, and explicit sexual content. Information regarding the individual films can be found below, and reviews are readily available across the internet.

If you or someone you know has been the victim of assault or violence, help is available 24/7 at the CDPC Crisis Unit and from the Mobile Crisis Team. Call (518) 549–6500

Click on the image below for a pdf version of our menu. 

We still very much appreciate our partnership with The Linda. However, we are still dealing with precarious times. The 2021 Film Festival will be taking place in the University at Albany Ballroom in the Campus Center.

Parking for the events will be as follows:

Thursday, 10/21: Parking in State student lot will be open from 4p-8p for the Symposium. 

Friday, 10/22: Parking in the State student lot will be open for event times.

Saturday, 10/23 and Sunday, 10/24: Parking in State student lot will be open for event times.

Additionally, we will still be utilizing our YouTube channel for sharing content as well. Make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel to get up-to-date notifications about new content. 

Check out our YouTube channel. 

Keynote Guest

Jewelle Gomez, author and activist

As a foremother of Afrofuturism, Gomez’s stories, novels, poems, plays, and criticisms center on the experiences of LGBTQ women of color. A devoted philanthropist, Gomez was the director of Cultural Equity Grants at the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Literature Program for the New York State Council on the Arts. She served on the boards of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation and the Open Meadows Foundation, both of which fund women's organizations and activities. She has also been a board member of the Cornell University Human Sexuality Archives and the advisory board of the James Hormel LGBT Center of the main San Francisco Public Library.

Gomez’s novel, The Gilda Stories (City Lights, 1991, 2016), which is being developed for TV with writer/director Cheryl Dunye as showrunner, follows the life of a black lesbian vampire, once a runaway slave, from 1850-2050. By reimagining American history through the metaphor of vampires and projecting a unique vision of its future, Gomez’s Gilda asks questions about family, power, community, and identity, about what it means to “take blood, not life, and leave something in exchange.”

5-6:30 pm: Interdisciplinary Symposium

Featuring: The American Red Cross of Northeastern New York

Peter Monaco, UAlbany Program in Writing and Critical Inquiry

Rae Muhlstock, UAlbany Program in Writing and Critical Inquiry

The Brotherhood of Evil Geeks

*All proceeds from the 2021 Vampire Film Festival will benefit the American Red Cross of Northeastern New York. To help them do the amazing work they do, the WCI Film Festival and Lecture Series, in partnership with the UAlbany Red Cross Club, will host a blood drive on October 22 from 10am-4pm in the UAlbany Campus Center room 116.

Find out more about the American Red Cross of Northeastern New York, including how you can donate, at:  https://www.redcross.org/local/new-york/eastern-new-york/about-us/locations/northeastern-new-york.html?CID=organic_gmb_listings  

Take me straight to the donation page