If you like zombies, don’t miss the Jan. 28 screening of the 2009 movie Zombieland in Cubberley Auditorium at 7 p.m. The free event is sponsored by Residential Education and Robinson House. Tickets, available at the Residential Education Office, are required.
There will be a special pre-show lecture by Stephen Watt, professor of English, theater and drama and associate dean for undergraduate education at Indiana University-Bloomington. His talk is delightfully titled, “The History of Zombieland: Or, Why It’s So Much Fun to Kill the Undead.”
The day before the screening, lucky residents of Robinson House will be treated to a screening of I Walked with a Zombie, a 1943 horror classic directed by Jacques Tourneur that is considered one of the best zombie movies of all time.
Watt will lead Robinson residents in a discussion of Tourneur’s work, the way the filmmaker borrowed from 19th-century narrative conventions about vampires and the film’s significance in the zombie film genre. Watt’s interest in zombies is tied to a new book he is writing about the 1890s, when Bram Stoker wrote and published Dracula, according to ROD TAYLOR, lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric and resident fellow at Robinson House. Watt’s visit and the film screenings are supported by the Charles F. Riddell Fund.
Taylor hopes the Zombieland screening will help students think “critically about the relationship among film, culture and social values.”
He adds, “And it’s just a good zombie film.”
