The Pervert´s Guide to Cinema

Colour, DIGIBETA
United Kingdom, Austria, Netherlands, 2006, 150 min
Section: Another View

Synopsis

Celebrated Slovene philosopher and psychologist Slavoj Žižek sees film as a means which enables us to externalise our desires, our most terrible fears, dread, feelings of guilt – in short, all the most profound aspects of the psyche –, to project them onto the screen, right there in front of our eyes, to face them and ultimately to try and come to terms with them. He illustrates his psychoanalytical position through his interpretation of famous works of world cinematography and also products of popular culture. Examples from the films of Charlie Chaplin, the Marx brothers, Bergman, Hitchcock, Tarkovsky, David Lynch, the Wachowski brothers and many others are woven in amongst his commentaries, reflections and witty observations, which he presents to us from suggestively authentic locations or at least from environments created in the spirit of the film under discussion.

About the director

Sophie Fiennes (b. 1967, England) has made short films, documentaries, she is a producer and also member of the Fiennes clan (her brothers Joseph and Ralph are famous actors, her sister Martha is a director and her brother Magnus writes film music). She was a member of the crew on a film by Peter Greenaway when she was only 19, over the next five years she worked her way up to the position of assistant director and later artistic director of his films. She then began her own film career; in 1998 she made the documentary Lars 1-10 with Lars von Trier about the principles underlying his Dogma 95 programme. The documentary The Late Michael Clark followed in 2000, about the eminent British choreographer and dancer, and in 2002 she came up with Hoover Street Revival, a picture of the Los Angeles ghetto capturing the life and work of a charismatic pastor.