July 25th 2026 @ 19h30
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Finally: a film series at au jus dedicated to lesbian vampires in cinema, presented to you in changing formats - from sleep-over B movie nights, dine-in-theatre, to collective film analysis - with selected works by Tony Scott, Tudor Gates, Ulrike Ottinger, Stephanie Rothman, and others.
On screen since the 30s, the vampire character is by far the most depicted lesbian image in the moving pictures. Even though written for and by the heteronormative white masculine subject, which serves us femme4femme sexuality only under the pretext of its subsequent punishment – can we still find pleasure in it? In the early 70s with the beginnings of an international feminist movement the lesbian vampire motif re-regains popularity. Exploitation genre films à la Stephanie Rothman subvert the mythological monster. Instead of the male voyeur watching the lesbians, the lesbians are watching you. Instead of the vampire stalking the human, the human is stalking the vampire.
Jump-cut thru cinema genres and film history: We will trace the multiple meanings of a horror trope that is both articulation of men’s fear of and sadism towards women’s sexuality and campy delight for dykes.
We will explore the strange pleasure of revenge horror and gender subversion, which is giving vagina dentata and penetrating woman. Like the perfect bachelorette machine that enters a masturbatory circle of reproduction with itself, suggesting that lesbianism is eternal. We will use Marx, Lacan, Deleuze/Guattari and everyone else to discuss the figure of the camp countess with long bloodlines that sucks dry the servant girl. The vamp’s death drive and the plus-de-jouir of the vampire mouth that consumes…
if your dear heart is wounded, our wild heart bleeds with yours
- carmilla
On screen since the 30s, the vampire character is by far the most depicted lesbian image in the moving pictures. Even though written for and by the heteronormative white masculine subject, which serves us femme4femme sexuality only under the pretext of its subsequent punishment – can we still find pleasure in it? In the early 70s with the beginnings of an international feminist movement the lesbian vampire motif re-regains popularity. Exploitation genre films à la Stephanie Rothman subvert the mythological monster. Instead of the male voyeur watching the lesbians, the lesbians are watching you. Instead of the vampire stalking the human, the human is stalking the vampire.
Jump-cut thru cinema genres and film history: We will trace the multiple meanings of a horror trope that is both articulation of men’s fear of and sadism towards women’s sexuality and campy delight for dykes.
We will explore the strange pleasure of revenge horror and gender subversion, which is giving vagina dentata and penetrating woman. Like the perfect bachelorette machine that enters a masturbatory circle of reproduction with itself, suggesting that lesbianism is eternal. We will use Marx, Lacan, Deleuze/Guattari and everyone else to discuss the figure of the camp countess with long bloodlines that sucks dry the servant girl. The vamp’s death drive and the plus-de-jouir of the vampire mouth that consumes…
if your dear heart is wounded, our wild heart bleeds with yours
- carmilla
Films we will watch
in no partiular order
The Blood Countess (2026) by Ulrike Ottinger
Dracula’s Daughter (1936) by Lambert Hillyer
The Karnstein Trilogy: The Vampire Lovers (1970), Lust for a Vampire (1971), Twins of Evil (1971), by Tudor Gates
The Velvet Vampire (1971) by Stephanie Rothman
Mark of Lilith (1986) by Bruna Fionda, Polly Gladwin, and Zach Mack-Nataf
The Hunger (1983) by Tony Scott
Vampyros Lesbos (1971) by Jesús Franco
More to follow!