PRESS RELEASE
On the tail of winning Writer of the Year at the highly regarded Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards in March, Melbourne-based horror film critic and commentator Alexandra Heller-Nicholas consolidates her position as one of the world's leading experts in two documentaries at this year's Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF).
Alexandre O. Philippe's Chain Reactions marks the 50th anniversary of Tobe Hooper's 1974 American horror classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, winning him the award for Best Documentary on Cinema at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
Heller-Nicholas is the subject of one of the film's five interview-chapters and talks in-depth about her experience of growing up with the film in Australia. She appears alongside luminaries Stephen King, Patton Oswalt, Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike and American director Karyn Kusama. Chain Reactions has played at over 40 film festivals internationally, including the London Film Festival, Telluride, Sitges and the Tokyo International Film Festival.
MIFF is also hosting the world premiere of Canadian filmmaker Donna Davies’ 1000 Women in Horror for US-based streaming service Shudder. Inspired by Heller-Nicholas’ 2020 book of the same name which was featured in Esquire Magazine’s "The 125 Best Books About Hollywood" list in 2022, Heller-Nicholas both wrote the documentary and is one of its many interview subjects.
1000 Women in Horror is a celebration of women's long historical involvement in the genre, featuring a who's who of today's most influential women in horror, including director Mary Harron (American Psycho), screenwriter Akela Cooper (M3GAN), actresses Kate Siegel (Netflix's Fall of the House of Usher) and Lin Shaye (the Insidious franchise), producer Sara Risher (A Nightmare on Elm Street) and Melbourne critic, academic and programmer Cerise Howard.
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas is a film critic and author who specialises in gender and horror cinema and women’s filmmaking. She is the award-winning author of ten books, 35 book chapters, myriad essays, reviews, interviews and co-editor of five books. She is a film programmer at SXSW Sydney, a contributing editor at Film International, and a member of the US-based Alliance of Women Film Journalists. Heller-Nicholas is an Adjunct Professor in Film and Television at Deakin University and holds a PhD in Screen Studies from the University of Melbourne.
Books by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas:
- The Cinema Coven: Witches, Witchcraft and Women's Filmmaking (McFarland, 2024)
- Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study 2nd Edition (McFarland, 2021)
- The Giallo Canvas: Art, Excess and Horror Cinema (McFarland, 2021)
- 1000 Women in Horror, 1895-2018 (BearManor, 2020)
- Eyes Without Faces: Masks in Horror Cinema (University of Wales Press, 2019) The Hitcher (Arrow Books, 2018)
- Ms. 45 (Columbia University Press, 2017)
- Suspiria (University of Liverpool Press, 2015)
- Found Footage Horror: Fear and the Appearance of Reality (2014)
- Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study (2011)
Further information:
- Official website: https://horrornonna.com/
- Melbourne International Film Festival: https://miff.com.au/
- The Rondon Hatton Classic Horror Awards: https://rondoaward.com/