World Vampire Congress 2016

I am a regular visitor to the Bram Stoker International Film Festival, held annually in Whitby. Indeed, I have been attending since its inception. This year the organisers have decided to do something a little different and host the World Vampire Congress 2016 on the first afternoon (Thursday 27th October 2016).

It was with an amount of (pleasant) shock that I received the email asking if I would participate in said event – doing a 20-minute lecture on anything vampire related. I agreed and will be putting together a little talk entitled Stoker and the Bat. It was common wisdom that Stoker put the transformation into bats into the genre but this lecture will look at pre-Stoker ideas of bat transformations and vampires becoming bats. They were rare, but there are examples out there.

The full lecture running order is:

Andy Boylan: 'Discusses Stoker and the Bat'
Dr Stella Louis: 'Twenty-one century vampires'
Dr David Annwn: 'Mysteries of the First Film Vampires'
Mr Kieran Foster: 'Presentation: Two Unmade Hammer Film scripts'
Katrina Stead: 'Bram Stoker meets Jane Stoddard'
Mr Stephen N. Farr: 'The Writing of Dracula in Whitby'
Dott. Mag. Debora Moretti: 'Witches and blood in Early Modern Tuscany'
Mr. Gavin Baddley: 'Fangs for Nothing: Putting the Bite Back in the Undead'

This will be followed by a screening of Nosferatu with Dmytro Morykit's new score performed live.

Tickets for the Congress and for the Nosferatu screening are available separately from full event wristbands.