THE FILMS OF ROBERTA FINDLAY

Edited by Peter Alilunas and Whitney Strub
For Edinburgh University Press’ Refocus: The American Directors Series
264 Pages, Forthcoming January 2023

I wrote a chapter for this book entitled: “Fragments of a Porn Star: Hybrid Documentary and Avant-Garde Impulses in Shauna: Every Man’s Fantasy

Hardback $110.00
Available HERE >>


About the Book:

The first book on the renowned and notorious cult filmmaker Roberta Findlay

  • Argues Findlay’s centrality to modern exploitation, hardcore pornography, and horror cinemas
  • Offers careful attention to numerous films that have received no previous scholarly attention
  • Contributes to the history of women filmmakers by highlighting a female pioneer generally omitted from accounts of that history

ReFocus: The Films of Roberta Findlay covers a variety of angles, using queer, feminist, historical, and close textual reading methods to grapple with the complicated and contradictory politics and meanings of this pioneering culture-worker. Chapters examine Findlay’s marketing strategies, the gender politics of her exploitation and hardcore films, 1980s horror productions, and several case studies of key individual films, in addition to a new interview with Findlay reflecting on her life and career.

A pioneering, prolific filmmaker who disdains her historical contributions to several male-dominated industries. A self-proclaimed misogynist who has been reclaimed as an unlikely “feminist” auteur. This fascinating new collection shines a much-needed spotlight on the many contradictions of Roberta Findlay, and is sure to become essential reading for scholars of adult and exploitation cinema. – David Church, Author of Disposable Passions: Vintage Pornography and the Material Legacies of Adult Cinema

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