Cinema and Psychoanalysis

Cinema and Psychoanalysis

Join us for a short mini-conference (90 mins) featuring 4 short talks on the relationship between contemporary cinema and psychoanalysis. Film has long been associated with psychoanalysis, but what is the relationship between them in the present moment of digital or platform capitalism and how can cinema help us in this impossible time? Can cinematic art function as a way for collective trauma to articulate itself? Can cinema bring us together against prevailing oppositional discourse? Does cinema help us understand love, or even help us to fall in love today? Our four guests - authors of two new books on cinema and psychoanalysis (see below) - each explore the topic from a different angle.

Check out Psychocinema here

Check out The Ethics of Ernst Lubitsch: Comedy without Relief here

Plus drinks after the event at 6.30pm.

Biographies

Ivana Novak is a film programmer at the Slovenian national television network, film critic and musician. She explores classical Hollywood cinema, comedy and television. She has co-edited and edited several books on film theory, including on Preston Sturges, Stanley Cavell and Ernst Lubitsch. Lubitsch Can’t Wait: A Theoretical Examination (2014) is available in English.

Helen Rollins is a writer and filmmaker interested in the intersection between philosophy and cinema. Her recent book 'Psychocinema' (Polity) re-examines the connection between film and psychoanalysis and her latest film project, a documentary miniseries about American religion, played at Sundance in 2024. Her narrative work (both written fiction and narrative film) explores themes related to subjectivity, lack, alienation and desire. Her narrative short films have played at scores of festivals worldwide.

Jela Krečič is a philosopher and writer who works as a lecturer at the University of Ljubljana. In her theoretical work, she deals with the philosophy of art, contemporary art, and popular culture. She has co-edited a book Lubitsch Can't Wait (2014) and also edited the volume The Final Countdown: Europe, Refugees and The Left (2017). Her book Deception in Modern Art and Hollywood will come out in 2025 by Bloomsbury Press.

Gregor Moder is a senior research associate of philosophy and teaches Philosophy of Art at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His works include Comic Love: Shakespeare, Hegel, Lacan (2015, in Slovenian), Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity (2017), Antigone. An Essay on Hegel’s Political Philosophy (2023, in Slovenian, forthcoming in German with Turia+Kant), and an edited volume on The Object of Comedy (2020, with Jamila Mascat). His latest work is a volume edited with Ivana Novak called The Ethics of Ernst Lubitsch: Comedy Without Relief (2024).

***The event was co-funded by the research program "Truth and Indirectness. Toward A New Theory of Truth" (J6-3138), financed by ARRS, the Slovenian Research Agency.