Miskatonic London Explores S&M in Cinema this March

The latest in the ongoing series of things that make wish I got to London more is the currently on Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies—London. Founded by film writer and author Kier-La Janisse (the essential House of Psychotic Women), the London edition of Miskatonic (courses on genre and cult film theory and history) is operating under the direction of Janisse and Electric Sheep founder Virginie Sélavy, the latter of which is instructing March’s course: THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES: SADO-MASOCHISM IN 1960S-70S CINEMA. 

Particularly appropriate considering this month’s 50 Shades of Grey and Peter Strickland’s absolutely brilliant The Duke of Burgundy, The Battle of the Sexes gets underway Thursday, March 12^th at Miskatonic’s London home, Horse Hospital (Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD) with Sélavy at the helm.

Miskatonic writes: “In the 1960s-70s, the relaxation of censorship, together with women’s greater social assertiveness, led to the appearance of a substantial number of art and/or exploitative films that explored male/female relationships through sexual power games. A large sub-section, including Mario Bava’s The Whip and the Body (1963), Luis Buñuel’s Belle de jour (1967), Sergio Martino’s The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (1971) and Vicente Aranda’s The Blood Spattered Bride delve into what are presented as women’s secret repressed desires and internal conflicts. Aside from his numerous Sade adaptations, Jess Franco also dreamily explored female characters who are both victims and tormentors in Venus in Furs (1969) and Succubus (1968). Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Woman in Chains (1968) and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Eden and After (1970) create hyper-aesthetic worlds of kinky abstract obsession while in Kôji Wakamatsu’s The Embryo Hunts in Secret (1966) and Pete Walker’s House of Whipcord (1974), the violence of amorous relationships takes on social and political connotations. Artist Niki de Saint Phalle made two unusual and fascinating contributions to this theme: not only did she co-direct her own semi-autobiographic perverse family fantasy, Daddy with Peter Whitehead (1973), but her art also appears in the fascinating Femina Ridens (Piero Schivazappa, 1968; pictured top), which toys with expectations about dominant and submissive roles. The lecture will examine all these and more ramifications of the period’s unfettered sado-masochistic fantasies.”

Entry to Miskatonic London is £10 advance / £11 on the door. For much more, visit the official site.