THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA takes the viewer on an exhilarating ride through some of the greatest movies ever made. Serving as presenter and guide is the charismatic Slavoj Zizek, ... See full summary »
In this tour de force filmed lecture, Slavoj Zizek lucidly and compellingly reflects on belief - which takes him from Father Christmas to democracy - and on the various forms that belief ... See full summary »
Examined Life pulls philosophy out of academic journals and classrooms, and puts it back on the streets. In Examined Life, filmmaker Astra Taylor accompanies some of today's most ... See full summary »
Director:
Astra Taylor
Stars:
K. Anthony Appiah,
Judith Butler,
Michael Hardt
Marx Reloaded is a cultural documentary that examines the relevance of German socialist and philosopher Karl Marx's ideas for understanding the global economic and financial crisis of 2008-... See full summary »
The film bears witness to German artist Anselm Kiefer's alchemical creative processes and renders in film, as a cinematic journey, the personal universe he has built at his hill-studio ... See full summary »
BEING IN THE WORLD takes us on a journey around the world to meet philosophers influenced by the thought of Martin Heidegger, as well as experts in the fields of sports, music, craft, and ... See full summary »
A documentary which challenges former Indonesian death-squad leaders to reenact their mass-killings in whichever cinematic genres they wish, including classic Hollywood crime scenarios and lavish musical numbers.
An unhappy middle-aged banker agrees to a procedure that will fake his death and give him a completely new look and identity - one that comes with its own price.
Director:
John Frankenheimer
Stars:
Rock Hudson,
Frank Campanella,
John Randolph
The sequel to The Pervert's Guide to Cinema sees the reunion of brilliant philosopher Slavoj Zizek with filmmaker Sophie Fiennes, now using their inventive interpretation of moving pictures to examine ideology - the collective fantasies that shape our beliefs and practices. Written by
P Guide
When Zizek is talking about John Carpenter's movie "They Live", he says that John Nada's best friend's name is John Armitage. However in the film his name is Frank Armitage. See more »
Quotes
Slavoj Zizek:
"They Live" from 1988 is definitely one of the forgotten masterpieces of the Hollywood Left.
See more »
Sophie Fiennes' film, 'The Pervert's Guide To Ideology', is essentially just an illustrated lecture, given by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek. The illustrations come from the movies, but in the main, Zizek isn't interested in the ideologies of the film makers - rather, he uses selections from the films' content as illustrative of the processes of real life, and the ideology he is interested in is not Nazism, or communism, but rather the way we all frame our own lives, and the universal themes linking our need for and use of such frames. Some of this universalist framework comes from psychoanalysis, although Zizek's Freudian perspective only really manifests itself in occasional unproven assertions that the it is the analytic process that has revealed the truth. Finnes shoots this well, and Zivek is intermittently interesting, but overall, the message is both highbrow and yet strangely unrevalatory; I found it hard to understand what I was meant to take away from this film, or in other words, what the film's own ideological case actually was. It's almost better enjoyed as a simple piece of discursive criticism than a coherent (or, for want of a better word, we might say "ideological") discussion of ideology.
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Sophie Fiennes' film, 'The Pervert's Guide To Ideology', is essentially just an illustrated lecture, given by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek. The illustrations come from the movies, but in the main, Zizek isn't interested in the ideologies of the film makers - rather, he uses selections from the films' content as illustrative of the processes of real life, and the ideology he is interested in is not Nazism, or communism, but rather the way we all frame our own lives, and the universal themes linking our need for and use of such frames. Some of this universalist framework comes from psychoanalysis, although Zizek's Freudian perspective only really manifests itself in occasional unproven assertions that the it is the analytic process that has revealed the truth. Finnes shoots this well, and Zivek is intermittently interesting, but overall, the message is both highbrow and yet strangely unrevalatory; I found it hard to understand what I was meant to take away from this film, or in other words, what the film's own ideological case actually was. It's almost better enjoyed as a simple piece of discursive criticism than a coherent (or, for want of a better word, we might say "ideological") discussion of ideology.