The season will take place throughout November in honour of her being awarded the BFI Fellowship.
The BFI has announced further details of its upcoming season of of Laua Mulvey: Thinking Through Film celebrating the filmmaker and writer’s career in the film industry.
As previously confirmed, Laura Mulvey will be bestowed the BFI Fellowship at BFI Southbank on 4 November in acknowledgement of her achievements over her illustrious career. This will then be followed by a special In Conversation event where Mulvey will share thoughts about her relationship to cinema through her extensive writing and career as a filmmaker.
The BFI Southbank season celebrates the collaborative films she made with theorist, author and filmmaker, Peter Wollen and later with artist and filmmaker Mark Lewis. The eight films presented use both drama and documentary to think through ideas around psychoanalysis, feminist theory, symbolism, formal experimentation, genre and the legacies of myth. Classics of British independent cinema, her films raise questions about the limits of cinema while continually challenging us to think about our relationship with the moving image.
One of the titles to feature in the season is Mulvey and Wollen’s landmark work, Riddles of the Sphinx (1977), which draws on the duo’s heoretical writings and on the influence of avant-garde film. Together they directed six films including Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons (1974), AMY! (1979), Frida Kahlo & Tina Modotti (1983) and Crystal Gazing (1982).
Mulvey will introduce screenings for each of her films and will take part in Q&As for AMY! and Friday Kahlo & Tina Modotti on 11 November and Disgraced Monuments and 23rd August 2008 on 27 November. A selection of her films will also be available to screen on BFI Player, including a new video essay by Mulvey commissioned by BFI. Mulvey’s work is also the subject of a one-day symposium on 22 November, with a programme of talks and discussions that will provide a deeper exploration of the various facets of Laura Mulvey’s extensive career, including her filmmaking, writing and programming.
The programme is also set to include: Experimenta: Riddles of the Sphinx in Context, a selection of visually striking, experimental films chosen by Laura Mulvey which gave context to and informed the development of her and Peter Wollen’s iconic work. Meanwhile, in December BFI Southbank’s regular Big Screen Classics strand will feature films chosen by Mulvey which have featured in her groundbreaking writing, creating an interesting dialogue with the programme for Too Much: Melodrama on Film, which will include a keynote season introduction with Mulvey.