TV Fangdom

TV Fangdom, a conference on television vampires, takes place on June 7-8 at the University of Northampton. Although not exactly in the vein of this blog, there are a couple of talks on the programme that could be interesting and fun to listen to, like Zhana Popova from the University of Sofia on Vampires among Housewives and Mothers in Post-totalitarian Bulgaria and Maria Mellins from St Mary's University College on Fangtasia London: The True Blood Franchise and Vampire Lifestyle. More information on the conference website.

According to Dr. Lorna Jowett from the University of Northampton, who teaches horror and vampire fiction, 'The TV Fangdom conference aims to put the university on the map as a location where exciting media research is happening, to encourage research in all areas of television studies. We want to demonstrate to our own students, at all levels, that we have a dynamic research community and environment.'

Thanks to Jordi Ardanuy for mentioning the conference.

An Exile in Paradise

The entry on Edward Lear (1812-88) in my Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature - incidentally right below an entry on J. S. Le Fanu mentioning In a Glass Darkly, the collection including Carmilla - states:

'Lear was by profession a landscape painter, but his elaborate landscape paintings have much less distinction and interest than his drawings and sketches.'

Fortunately, there is more of interest in Lear's work as a landscape painter than the Guide will have us believe. He published his Journals of a Landscape Painter in Albania, &c in 1851, and a couple of years ago a television series followed in Lear's footsteps on his journey through Greece and Albania: An Exile in Paradise: The Adventures of Edward Lear is currently aired here in Denmark, so I just caught the episode in which Robert Horne - described as 'an adventurer, traveller and writer with a keen interest in art and science fiction' - guides the viewer through Albania, looking for the places where Lear stayed and tracing the history from Lear's time until today. Lear appears to have been something of an adventurer himself.

Detailed information on the production is available from Lear Productions, with the promo below. A DVD, unfortunately, is currently unavailable.

Support the Vampire Rights Amendment

I find it hard not to be amused by this recent development in vampire fiction. It is an incredible fact that a few reports on the exhumation of dead people suspected of haunting the living in villages in 18th Century Serbia over the past 300 years have turned into the vampires of modern culture. For further examples go to Blood Copy.

True Horror

The highlight of Discovery Channel's Vampires episode in the True Horror series starring Anthony Head of Buffy fame is the material concerning an episode in a small Romanian village where a 'vampire' was exhumed and destroyed in 2003.

The corpse claimed to be a vampire (strigoi) was that of 76 year old Toma Petre who had died on December 26th 2003. After a few days some of his relatives claimed that he came to them while they slept and sucked their blood. Believing that people would die if they didn't destroy the strigoi, the relatives (of whom two, Gheorghe and Floarea Marinescu, are interviewed) exhumed the body and found blood all around its mouth. They cut up the corpse and removed the heart which they burnt at the cross roads. The ashes were mixed with water, and those who were ill drank the mixture to protect themselves against the strigoi. However, the sister of the deceased called upon the authorities, and six people were prosecuted.

This all happened in a village called Marotinu de Sus which is located close to Celaru about 40 km south east of Craiova. According to this Romanian web site the village has 760 citizens.

The picture shown here is from a local newspaper, the Banateanul, that covered the story, but extensive live footage is shown in the True Horror documentary.

Apart from the footage from Marotinu de Sus, the documentary is a mixture of various aspects of 'vampirism', including an interview with Sean Manchester on the so-called 'Highgate Vampire' and a walk in the company of Nicolae Paduraru of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula to Vlad Tepes' fortress overlooking the river Arges. Mark Benecke from the same society demonstrates what happens to a human corpse after its death.

Some fake documents are shown in order to dramatize the tale of Peter Plogojowitz. The documents look like something from a horror film, and for some reason Anthony Head says that the exhumation of Plogojowitz occurred in 1738, i.e. 13 years later than it actually did, and he even claims that copies of the report were sent to every court in Europe. I find it pretty strange that the producers did not attempt to be more accurate in relating one of the most famous vampire cases.

The True Horror series is available on a double disc DVD, which includes the episodes on werewolves, witches and zombies.