Filmcollege: Psychosexual Drama + Possession (1981)
In this film lecture, Hugo Emmerzael explores the psychosexual drama: films in which desire, intimacy and sexuality become forces that can transform — and ultimately destabilise — the lives of their characters. Rather than treating sexuality as simply a subject or source of eroticism, these films use it to explore power, identity, jealousy, obsession and the fragile boundaries between love and violence.
From the psychological tensions of Alfred Hitchcock to the surreal and unsettling worlds of David Lynch and David Cronenberg, filmmakers have repeatedly used sexuality to explore what lies beneath the surface of human relationships. Hugo also looks at more contemporary approaches by filmmakers such as Julia Ducournau, Lucile Hadžihalilović and Claire Denis, examining how psychosexual cinema can make inner emotional states visible through the body. What happens when desire becomes inseparable from fear, control or loss of identity? And how can cinema turn intimacy into something strange, threatening or even monstrous?
After the lecture, we will screen Possession (1981), Andrzej Żuławski’s intensely physical and unsettling portrait of a marriage falling apart. As a relationship descends into jealousy, paranoia and violence, the boundaries between psychological breakdown, sexual desire and something altogether more monstrous begin to disappear.
- 19:30
Kies tijdstip
- filmspecial
In this film lecture, Hugo Emmerzael explores the psychosexual drama: films in which desire, intimacy and sexuality become forces that can transform — and ultimately destabilise — the lives of their characters. Rather than treating sexuality as simply a subject or source of eroticism, these films use it to explore power, identity, jealousy, obsession and the fragile boundaries between love and violence.
From the psychological tensions of Alfred Hitchcock to the surreal and unsettling worlds of David Lynch and David Cronenberg, filmmakers have repeatedly used sexuality to explore what lies beneath the surface of human relationships. Hugo also looks at more contemporary approaches by filmmakers such as Julia Ducournau, Lucile Hadžihalilović and Claire Denis, examining how psychosexual cinema can make inner emotional states visible through the body. What happens when desire becomes inseparable from fear, control or loss of identity? And how can cinema turn intimacy into something strange, threatening or even monstrous?
After the lecture, we will screen Possession (1981), Andrzej Żuławski’s intensely physical and unsettling portrait of a marriage falling apart. As a relationship descends into jealousy, paranoia and violence, the boundaries between psychological breakdown, sexual desire and something altogether more monstrous begin to disappear.
