Sometimes going to the cinema can be a hypnotic experience. I vividly remember being entranced by Blade Runner 2049; I also remember feeling completely dazed by the dullness of Tenet.
One Swedish film festival wants to take this idea to the next level. The Göteborg Film Festival, Scandinavia’s biggest film and TV event, has announced that this year’s event will feature a special experiment with mass hypnosis.
The Hypnotic Cinema will “examine what happens with the film experience if you dare to lose control over your consciousness by being hypnotized.” So before each of the three screenings, a hypnotist will perform mass hypnosis on the audience. They’ll supposedly transform the audience’s state of mind to match the mood and theme of the film being shown on the screen. Then after the film finishes, the hypnotist will break the hypnotic spell.
The films being shown include Memoria, starring Tilda Swinton, who’s always a hypnotic presence anyway. The Sundance-premiering Danish film Speak No Evil will also be featured.
“This year’s festival focus Disorder explores the boundary between order and disorder, in our society and within ourselves,” the event’s synopsis explains. “Through The Hypnotic Cinema we examine what happens with the film experience if you dare to lose control over your consciousness by being hypnotized.”
The film festival’s artistic director explained to Variety how the hypnosis idea was born. “There are very, very big similarities between being hypnotized and watching a film, especially in a cinema theatre,” he said. “Cinema theatres and hypnosis both emerged in the late 19th century. If you look at early cinema – Méliès, Griffith – it’s totally full of hypnosis. I don’t think this is a coincidence.”
The Hypnotic Cinema screenings are set to take place at Stora Teatern in Göteborg on January 30th (Land Of Dreams), February 2nd (Memoria), and February 6th (Speak No Evil). If you’re curious about the event, you can find out more on the festival’s official website.
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Watch the trailer for The Hypnotic Cinema:
