Kier-La Janisse is a film writer, publisher, producer, acquisitions executive for Severin Films, and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University. She is the author of House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (2012/2022) and has been an editor on numerous books including Warped & Faded: Weird Wednesday and the Birth of the American Genre Film Archive (2021) and Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015). She wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021), and produced the acclaimed Blu-ray box sets All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror (2021) and The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle (2023). 

Kier-La has been a programmer for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, co-founded Montreal microcinema Blue Sunshine, founded the CineMuerte Horror Film Festival (1999-2005) in Vancouver, and was the Festival Director of Monster Fest in Melbourne, Australia. She has mounted many site-specific screenings, activating film locations and showing films in a church, on a screen of snow, and with the audience in the water. 

She has shared her genre film expertise as a guest speaker in various documentaries, including Eli Roth’s History of Horror (2019/2020); classes, conferences and conventions across the globe. There is even a character named after her on Season 2 of Torchwood! 

Please tell us about a turning point or challenge that you feel shaped you as a leader or mentor.

"Realizing that I didn't want to do everything by myself, that I had to learn to collaborate. The first decade of my career I was staunchly independent in a way that didn't really benefit me; and it was also a lonely place to be. Realizing that collaboration would not only make projects stronger and better, but would also give you people to share the highs and lows with, was a real turning point. So I look at myself less as a leader and more a collaborator."

What would you say is the most important trait or skill to develop for someone working in your field?

"Historical knowledge of the field and awareness of new developments, ability to adapt to change (which includes being curious about new technologies), finding people you like to collaborate with, who inspire you everyday - and being nice to them!"

Kier-La's session will be delivered virtually.