WR - Mysteries of the Organism (BFI Modern Classics) - Softcover

Durgnat, Raymond

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0851707203 ISBN 13: 9780851707204

Publisher: British Film Institute, 1999

Synopsis

The starting point for Dusan Makavejev's film 'WR: Mysteries of the Organism' is Wilhelm Reich, the Marxist psychoanalyst who preached sexual enlightenment as a gateway to a better society. Juxtaposing hippie America and cold war Yugoslavia, it's a film which speaks urgently to the contemporary world. In the BFI MODERN CLASSICS series.

About this title

About the Author

Raymond Durgnat (1932-2002) was the author of many groundbreaking books about the cinema, among them Films and Feelings (1967), A Mirror for England (1970), Sexual Alienation in the Cinema (1971), The Strange Case of Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Renoir (both 1974), and A Long Hard Look at Psycho (BFI, 2002).

From the Back Cover

The starting point for Dusan Makavejev's controversial and explicit "WR - Mysteries of the Organism" (1971), is Wilhelm Reich, the Marxist psychoanalyst who preached sexual enlightenment as a gateway to a better society. Reich is a "intellectual maverick" and "sexual pioneer", and theorist of "Orgone energy" and "world revolution". Loosely inspired by Reich's "The Function of the Orgasm" WR stages an encounter between psychotherapy and Marxism, sexual permissiveness and socialism. Juxtaposing hippie America and cold war Yugoslavia, it is a film of ideas and sensations which speaks to the contemporary world. It was banned in Yugoslavia, under pressure from Moscow, as politically offensive. This book explores the film and how its spectators interact with it.

Edition details

• Publisher: British Film Institute
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0851707203
• ISBN 13: 9780851707204
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96