Hysteria on Film
20 December 2008
Part of Event Horizon: 'Sawing off the Branch I'm Sitting On' - a selection by John Millar
From 5pm
(approximate duration 90 mins)
According to the writer Elaine Showalter, hysteria is a disorder that "mimics culturally permissible expressions of distress". Hysteria on Film is a screening of two short films that deal in different ways with issues of mass hysteria, femininity, performance and complicity, followed by an open discussion with the two directors.
The Madness of the Dance
A film by Carol Morley
In the middle ages there was an outbreak of dancing manias in Europe that lasted hundreds of years. In the 20th century thousands of Chinese men thought that their genitalia were vanishing whilst schoolgirls in Belgium thought that they were being poisoned by a certain brand of fizzy drink. The professor takes us on a musical journey through mass hysteria. (18 mins)
Programme (Second Edition)
A film by Richard Squires
Programme is a hybrid work that examines the origins of hysteria at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, interweaving documentary, drama and sporadic attempts at hypnotic communication. In the late 1800s the Salpêtrière was the stage for Dr Charcot's highly theatrical presentations of hysteria. Programme examines aspects of his practice that suggest simulation or collusion and revisits the Salpêtrière's history as an agent of social control. Interviews with historians, dramatic reconstructions and a syphilitic narrator come together to fashion a hysterical narrative that eventually unravels to expose its own construction. (27 mins)
