Electric Sheep podcast: Dangerous Women and Foxy Heroes

To compliment this month’s online theme of dangerous and desperate women in the online print magazine, we’re happy to present in the podcast a pair of Q&As recorded at Electric Sheep film club screenings. Alex Fitch talks to Zoe Baxter, the presenter of Resonance FM’s radio show about Asian culture in the UK and discuss the epic ‘wuxia’ film Hero which featured memorable roles for female action heroes Maggie Cheung and Ziyi Zhang, and in the main interview, Electric Sheep magazine editor Virginie Selavy talks to Brixton based film maker Rebecca Johnson about the classic ‘blaxploitation’ film Foxy Brown starring Pam Grier and the various themes and depictions of race and gender that are present in the film.

More for more information and a variety of formats you can stream / download, please visit the home of this podcast at www.archive.org

In association with

Links: IMDb pages on Foxy Brown and Hero

Wikipedia pages on ‘wuxia’ and ‘blaxploitation’

Zoe’s website: http://luckykitty.blogspot.com
More info about Rebecca Johnson’s film Top Girl

Recommended events:

Panel Borders at Comica:

Nov 6th: Charlie Adlard and The Walking Dead

Alex Fitch hosts an hour long talk with British artist Charlie Adlard about drawing various strips for 2000AD including Savage, Nikolai Dante and Judge Dredd plus his ongoing commitment to the monthly American survival horror comic The Walking Dead which he has been drawing since 2004 and has just been turned into a new TV series produced by Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption). Followed by a signing with the artist.

Saturday, November 6th, 4.30pm
London Print Studio, 425 Harrow Rd, London W10 4RE
(nearest tube: Warwick Avenue / Westbourne Park)

Nov 10th: Comic Cuts – controversial comic books and banned periodicals

Alex Fitch discusses examples of banned and censored comic books in the last quarter of the 20th Century with publisher Tony Bennett and (via speaker phone) writer / artist Rick Veitch.

Tony’s publishing company Knockabout has seen its titles seized by British Customs, has been taken to court for publishing “drug related titles”, and for promoting the work of Robert Crumb. Knockabout have also commissioned comic book adaptations of previously banned novels such as Lady Chatterly’s Lover.
Rick is best known for his collaborations with writer Alan Moore, including the drawing of an issue of Moore’s Miracleman comic in the 1980s which was withdrawn from many shops due to its “graphic depictions of childbirth” and then when he took over as writer on another Moore comic – Swamp Thing – left the periodical when the publisher refused to print a certain issue.

Wednesday, November 10, 6pm
Whitechapel Idea Store, 321 Whitechapel Road, London, E1 1BU
(nearest tube: Whitechapel / Bethnal Green)

Nov 5th: Transitions Conference at Birkbeck College

Alex Fitch will be chairing a session on comics and academia at the Transitions multi-disciplinary research conference on comics and graphic novels with Laydeez do Comics’ Sarah Lightman and Nicola Streeten

Friday, November 5th, 1.30pm (TBC) / conference starts at 9.30am
Birkbeck College, Clore Centre, 25-27 Torrington Square, London WC1E 7JL
(nearest tube: Russell Square / Goodge Street)

Also:

Nov 6th: Frames of Mind: Brick and Darryl Cunningham

What role can comics play in mental illness? A conversation between Brick, author of Depresso, and Darryl Cunningham, author of Psychiatric Tales, about their moving (semi) autobiographical graphic novels dealing with depression and other issues and how creating these comics has helped both themselves and others.

Saturday, November 6th, 2.30pm
London Print Studio, 425 Harrow Rd, London W10 4RE
(nearest tube: Warwick Avenue / Westbourne Park)

Nov 7th: Comica Comiket: Independent Comics Fair

Comica Comiket, the independent comics fair, teams up with the popular, long-running National Collectors Marketplace at the Royal National Hotel, Russell Square, and taking over its own dedicated space, the plush Ellis Room from 12-5pm. The legendary Fast Fiction Table was started by Paul Gravett at the Westminster Central Hall Comic Marts in 1981 and grew into the regular hub of the UK small press scene of the 1980s and birthplace of Escape Magazine. A limited number of exhibitor tables for the Comiket will be available at affordable prices and Charlie Adlard, Darryl Cunningham, Paul Duffield, Hunt Emerson, Garen Ewing, Paul Grist, Roger Langridge, Ellen Lindner, Woodrow Phoenix and others will draw live and sign books during the afternoon. The public are admitted free.

Sunday, November 7, 2010 – Noon to 5pm
Royal National Hotel, 38-51 Bedford Way, London WC1H ODG
(Nearest tube: Euston / St. Pancras)