The Department of Film presents a weeklong run of Sophie Fiennes’s The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, an exuberant romp through the popular field of dreams known as cinema with Slavoj Žižek, the irrepressible Slovenian psychoanalyst and philosopher. Žižek not only presents clips from films by Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, and the Marx Brothers, to name a few, but makes his points by inserting himself into some of the films. Originally a three-part Channel 4/More 4 documentary, Fiennes’s exhilarating exegesis on the constant interplay between the unconscious mind and the movies is about “the ultimate pervert art. It doesn’t give you what you desire—it tells you how to desire” (Žižek). In conjunction with the weeklong run, Films from The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema offers a selection of films that are referenced in Fiennes’s jubilant documentary. Visit www.thepervertsguide.com for more details.
Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film.