[MaFLa] reminder: Philm Club series: Bodies and Technologies. 15 February, 6.00 PM - La piel que habito (2011, Pedro Almodóvar)

[Krisztina Biber]

The CEU Department of Philosophy cordially invites you to the next
screenings of its Philm Club on Bodies and Technologies.
How is the human body transformed by technology? Are we still the “tool
using animals” we once thought we were, or have we become technological
resources ourselves? Are we – or are we becoming – machines after all?
Where are we heading as a species given the escalating integration of
machinery into our very flesh? And what do these technological add-ons
do to individual lives? Endless enhancement of, and liberation from, the
body, or bottomless disfiguration and restraint thereof?  How is
technology embodied and how does it impact our perceptual and appetitive
world? 
These and similar questions will be tackled at the Philm Club’s next
screenings. 

LA PIEL QUE HABITO (2011, The Skin I Live In)
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar
Spanish with English subtitles, 120 min.
Bizarre, shocking, sexy and dark, this is Almodóvar at his brilliant
melodramatic best as he toys with themes of obsession, revenge and
playing God. Based on a novel by French writer Thierry Jonquet, the
story includes many elements that are familiar to lovers of Almodóvar's
works, in his construct about a plastic surgeon intent on recreating a
resilient artificial skin. In his address to a seminar as a surgeon
responsible for successful face transplants, Dr Robert Ledgard
(Banderas) tells his audience how it is our face that identifies us. The
face that he sees on giant video screens throughout his home is that of
Vera (Anaya), a beautiful young woman wearing a flesh-coloured bodysuit,
who lives behind a locked door. Why is Vera his prisoner? What is the
nature of their relationship? Why does her face resemble that of his
dead wife? And what secrets does his housekeeper Marilia (Paredes), who
claims to have insanity in her entrails, keep hidden? Urban Cinefile
Friday, February 15, 6 P.M.
Zrinyi 14, room 412.


ROPÁCI (1988, Jan Sverák, 20 min.)
SPIKLENCI SLASTI (1996, Conspirators of Pleasure)
Directed by Jan Svankmajer
Czech with English subtitles, 85 min.
Conspirators of Pleasure has no dialogue, but each of its characters
has his or her own unique form of private sexual self-expression,
usually involving homemade autoerotic gizmos. A shopkeeper enjoys being
caressed by robot arms while watching his favorite TV news anchorwoman.
She likes having her toes sucked by fish. Her husband mortifies his
flesh with devices that rotate feathers, bristles, and nails. A woman
tortures an effigy of her neighbor; he does the same to her effigy while
he's dressed as a chicken. All are served by a postal delivery woman who
rolls chunks of bread into dense pills and stuffs them into her nose and
ears. These six cross paths without realizing that each is a member of
this furtive fraternity of fetishists. 
Czech director Jan Svankmajer, best known for his stop-motion animated
shorts, takes his view of the human body as an arbitrary and malleable
social construct (Kafka by way of David Cronenberg) into Buñuel
territory. His cheerful, inventive satire on bourgeois sexual morality
(if everyone is a deviant, then no one is, and no one need be ashamed)
looks at all the creativity and hard work that goes into
self-gratification and dares to call it art. filmvault.com 
Friday, February 22, 6 P.M.
Zrinyi 14, room 412.

Find out more on the Philm Club blog:
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