We see HitchCon ‘26 in your future

Hitchcockian Wizardry: Myth, Magic & the Macabre

Oct. 3 & 4, 2026 • Online
+ Special focus on the films of David Lynch

Three days • 20 talks, conversations & special events • Recordings included

We’re about to gather for a full weekend of thinking out loud about Hitchcock’s cinematic wizardry with authors, filmmakers and curious minds from around the world. You should be in this conversation. Can’t attend every talk? Your registration includes recordings.

A few highlights

Free Screening: Family Plot
Spotlight on David Lynch
Sidney Gottlieb & David Sterritt: Family Plot and Hitchcock's Late Style
Victoria Nelson: Pursuit, Paranoia & the Language of the Birds
JF Martel: A Dream of Dark and Troubling Things

HitchCon ‘26: Behold Your Future

Join film lovers, filmmakers, experts and seekers from around the world for a weekend exploring the weird, eerie and dreamlike dimensions of Hitchcock—and get a special spotlight on David Lynch. Hear new ideas, ask questions, and join in the famously freewheeling Icebox Conversations and a free online screening of Family Plot Friday, Oct. 2!

Plan your weekend: See the program schedule. >

Session times: Sessions will begin at 8:00 a.m. Pacific / 11:00 a.m. Eastern / 4:00 p.m UK.

Conference recordings: Can’t make the whole weekend? Video recordings will be available to registered ticketholders.

Meet your guides into the mystery.

Joel Gunz

Host, HitchCon
Filmmaker and writer, “Hitchcock’s Hermetic Hermeneutics” (forthcoming)
Talk: Family Plot and the Magic of Pure Cinema
PREVIEW & BIO
Victoria Nelson

Author, The Secret Life of Puppets
In conversation: Pursuit, Paranoia and the Language of Birds
PREVIEW & BIO
Stella Castelli

Author, Death is Served: American Recipes for Murder—A Serial Compulsion.
Talk: Twin Peaks: A Tale Enabled by Absent Female Bodies
PREVIEW & BIO
JF Martel

Co-host, Weird Studies podcast; author, Art in the Age of Artifice
Talk: A Dream of Dark and Troubling Things
PREVIEW & BIO
Rebecca McCallum

Writer, Speaker, Curator and Creator & Host of Talking Hitchcock Podcast
Talk: A Strangely Familiar Home Invasion in Shadow of a Doubt
PREVIEW & BIO
Sidney Gottlieb

HitchCon Board Member
Editor, The Hitchcock Annual, Hitchcock on Hitchcock and Haunted by Vertigo
Talk: In Conversation: Family Plot

PREVIEW & BIO
Caroline Young

Author, Fashioning Hitchcock: Stories Behind the Costumes from The Lodger to Marnie
Talk: The Other Vanishing Lady: Monograms and Magic in The Lady Vanishes
PREVIEW & BIO
Steven DeRosa

HitchCon Board Member
Author, Writing with Hitchcock: The Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and John Michael Hayes
Talk: Scripting the Con: Hitchcock, Lehman, and the Final Wink of Family Plot
PREVIEW & BIO
David Sterritt

Author, The Films of Alfred Hitchcock (Revised & Expanded)
Talk: In Conversation: Family Plot
PREVIEW & BIO
Thomas Leitch

Author, The Alfred Hitchcock Encyclopedia and Find the Director and Other Hitchcock Games
Talk: Haunted Hitchcock
PREVIEW & BIO
Oisin Queally

Folklorist and filmmaker, The Hollowing
Talk: The Island That Likes to Be Visited: Hitchcock, Myth and the Phantom Place
PREVIEW & BIO
Elizabeth (Beth) Bullock

HitchCon Board Member
Author, “Imaginary Women in Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman” in Vertigo 65 (forthcoming)
Talk: “This Whole House is a Hotbed of Spies and Saboteurs”: Hitchcockian Farcical Espionage in McGoohan’s The Prisoner
PREVIEW & BIO
Richard Gilmore

Author, Hitchcock as Philosopher of the Erotic
Talk: Hitchcock and the Myth of the Fall
PREVIEW & BIO
Colleen Glenn

Editor, Star Bodies and the Erotics of Suffering
Talk: La-La Lynch: Mulholland Drive and the Nightmare Factory
PREVIEW & BIO
Kelly Bulkeley

Author, Big Dreams: The Science of Dreaming and the Origins of Religion
Talk: The Gift of David Lynch’s Dream Logic
PREVIEW & BIO
Nick Haeffner

Author, Alfred Hitchcock
Talk: Lost in the Stars: An Anti-auteurist Approach to the Work of David Lynch
PREVIEW & BIO
Katy Coakley

Documentary filmmaker, “There’s No Planet B!”
Talk: I Think You’ve Got The Wrong Guy! An Absurdist Approach to Mistaken Identities in North by Northwest and The Big Lebowski
PREVIEW & BIO
Mark Padilla

Author, Classical Myth in Four Films of Alfred Hitchcock
Talk: “Well, a Boy’s Best Friend is his Mother”: Musings on How Aeschylus and Eugene O’Neill Nurture the Tragic Expression of Psycho
PREVIEW & BIO
Roger Luckhurst

Author, Gothic: An Illustrated History and Graveyards: A History of Living with the Dead

Talk: Hitchcock’s Homage: The Fake/Real (or Real/Fake) Psychic in Family Plot

PREVIEW & BIO