Fifth European Psychoanalytic Film Festival: Epff5

Screen Memories from Eastern Europe: Programme Announced For 5th European Psychoanalytic Film Festival, 29 October - 01 November 2009.

The Fifth European Psychoanalytic Film Festival (epff5) returns this year, with Eastern European cinema as the focus of a fascinating programme of screenings, panel discussions and workshops. The festival, which takes place at BAFTA's headquarters in London from 29 October - 1 November 2009, will bring together film-makers, psychoanalysts, critics, film historians, academics and film-lovers for an in-depth look at cinema from a psychoanalytic perspective. 

The Festival is supported by eminent director Bernardo Bertolucci who has been its Honorary President since it began in 2001, and further speakers will include writer and academic Laura Mulvey (UK), director Peter Forgacs (Hungary), director Arsen Anton Ostojic (Croatia), academic and broadcaster Ian Christie (UK), actor, writer and director Gabriel Pintilei (Romania) and writer and director Alexei Popogrebsky (Russia).  

Festival Chairman, psychoanalyst Andrea Sabbadini, says, 

"Following the success of four previous festivals, epff5 is an unmissable event for all those interested in cinema, psychoanalysis or both. If offers a unique opportunity to see and discuss some of the best, and little-seen, Eastern European features of the last few years, such as the Hungarian Own Death by Peter Forgacs, the Estonian Somnambuul by Sulev Keedus and the Romanian Elevator by George Dorobantu." 

An exciting new addition to this year's programme is a series of workshops on practical aspects of filmmaking, with practitioners talking about their work with psychoanalysts. In 'To Cut or Not to Cut', Maggie Mills, who worked for the British Board of Film and Video Classification for 18 years, will explore with psychotherapist and novelist Carol Topolski the issue of censorship, drawing parallels between the limits and freedoms of the mind and in society. Film editor Asher Tlalim will also co-present a workshop, 'Film Editing and Working Through', looking at the editing process and its links with psychoanalysis. 

There will also be panel discussions, including an exploration of the role of the erotic imagination in films such as Ingmar Bergman's Faithless and Love, directed by Hungarian Karoly Makk. There will also be a discussion on the relationship between animation, literature and dreams, focusing on Alexander Petrov's film The Dream of A Ridiculous Man, and 'Screening Desire', a discussion of the work of epff5's Honorary President, Bernardo Bertolucci. 

Although it has a psychoanalytic slant the festival has a broad appeal and is open to anyone with an interest in film and contemporary culture and there will be the opportunity for the audience to participate at open panel discussions.

The full programme, including further information about the featured films and speakers, can be found at www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/epff4. 

For All Press Queries/Press Tickets/Interviews: Ginette Goulston-Lincoln, 07958 448 002 or [email protected] or Caroline Graty, 07984 911913 or [email protected]

Information For Editors

About The Festival

Established in 2001 and held every two years, the European Psychoanalytic Film Festival is a unique forum for creative dialogue between psychoanalysts, film makers, academics, critics and the public.  The 2007 festival was attended by over 300 people from 20 different countries and with a range of backgrounds and interests. The festival is organised by the Institute of Psychoanalysis. 

• Featured Films, Shorts And Animations (Further Titles Tbc)
• Elevator: Dir George Dorobantu, Romania, 2008
• Own Death: Dir Peter Forgács, Hungary, 2008
• Simple Things: Aleksei Popogrebsky, Russia, 2007
• Somnambuul: Dir Suley Keedus, Estonia, 2003
• Jasminum: Dir Jan Jakub Kolski, Poland, 2006
• A Wonderful Night In Split: Dir Arsen Ostoijc, Croatia, 2004 
• Brief Encounter: Dir David Lean, Uk, 1945
• The Cow: Aleksandr Petrov, Russia, 1990
• The Dress: Dir Girlin Bassovskaja, Estonia, 2007
• Institute Of The Dream: Dir Mati Kűtt, Estona, 2006
• Les Carnival Des Animaux, Dir Michaela Pavlátová, Czech Republic, 2005

Festival Website: www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/epff5

Programme Information: http://www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/epff5/programme.htm

Film Synopses: http://www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/epff5/synopses.htm

Abstracts Of Panels And Workshops: http://www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/epff5/abstracts.htm

Booking Details: http://www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/epff5/register.htm

Registration: contact Ann Glynn, [email protected]

Bernardo Bertolucci, the leading Italian film director, is Honorary President of the European Psychoanalytic Film Festival. He is also Honorary Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Born in Parma in 1941, his films include: Before the Revolution, The Spider's Strategem, The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900, La Luna, The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky, Little Buddha, Stealing Beauty, Besieged and The Dreamers.

Andrea Sabbadini is Chairman of the European Psychoanalytic Film Festival and of the Screening Conditions series of films at the ICA. He is a fellow of the Institute of Psychoanalysis, current director of publications of the British Psychoanalytical Society, honorary senior lecturer at University College London and the Film Section editor of The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. He has published extensively in psychoanalytic journals and edited Time in psychoanalysis (Feltrinelli, 1979), The couch and the silver screen (Brunner-Routledge, 2003) and Projected shadows (Routledge, 2007), and co-edited Even paranoids have enemies (Routledge, 1998) and Psychoanalytic visions of cinema/ Cinematic visions of psychoanalysis (in Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 2007).

Press Tickets: Contact Ginette Goulston-Lincoln, 07958 448 002 or [email protected] or Caroline Graty, 07984 911913 or [email protected]

The Institute Of Psychoanalysis  is the main UK professional organisation for psychoanalysts in the UK and a global centre of excellence in the provision of psychoanalytic training, education, publication and clinical practice. Established in 1919, its membership has included Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion and Donald Winnicott. It is the home of the London Clinic of Psychoanalysis, founded in 1926, one of a number of clinics established by Freud in Europe still in operation today. It offers consultations and help finding an analyst, in selected cases at a low fee.

It administers these activities on behalf of the British Psychoanalytical Society and is a member institution of the British Psychoanalytic Council. The Institute is also a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association, which safeguards standards in psychoanalysis and ensures a rigorous training process. 

For more information visit http://www.psychoanalysis.org.uk

For clinical enquiries contact the London Clinic of Psychoanalysis on 020 7563 5002, [email protected] 

About Psychoanalysis Psychoanalysis is based on the theory that the experiences of birth, early relationships with parents, sexuality, love, loss and death lay down patterns in the mind which provide unconscious templates, or models of relationships. Such unconscious versions of relationships are often at the root of the problems which lead people to seek help. Regular sessions with a psychoanalyst provide a setting within which these unconscious patterns can be brought into awareness and worked on with a view to change. 

While people's unconscious patterns are often formed in early life, a psychoanalyst's focus is much more on the present – in the consulting room and outside – than on a person's hard-to-reach past life. Treatment also takes into account people's tendencies to both negative and positive transferences – ‘transference’ meaning the bringing over of attitudes and beliefs about the other from one arena (the primitive or archaic) into another (current adult life).

People are liable, self-destructively but unintentionally, to sabotage their lives and to be unable to make use of the help that is on offer. Psychoanalysis can often lessen such tendencies, since it is fully open to the ways in which, through transference, negative images are applied to the analyst and undermine the therapeutic process.

To greater or lesser degree, everyone is trapped by deep-seated unconscious, archaic relationships to others; through psychoanalysis we can become more free to live our lives creatively and fully.

 For more information visit: http://www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/frontpage.htm#whatis

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