Philosophy / Psychology / Critical Theory

The master of existentialism Jean-Paul Sartre talks about philosophy, his personal story, his own experiences and also discusses social and political changes that occurred in his lifetime, reflecting the political universe that surrounds him.

A look at the controversial author, philosopher and candidate for Slovenian presidency: Slavoj Zizek.

In this tour de force filmed lecture, Slavoj Zizek lucidly and compellingly reflects on belief - which takes him from Father Christmas to democracy - and on the various forms that belief takes, drawing on Lacanian categories of thought. In a radical dismissal of todays so called post-political era, he mobilizes the paradox of universal truth urging us to dare to enact the impossible. It is a characteristic virtuoso performance, moving promiscuously from subject to subject but keeping the larger argument in view. Based at Ljubliana University, Slavoj Zizek's main body of work includes Welcome to the Desert of the Real and, most recently, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity.

THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA takes the viewer on an exhilarating ride through some of the greatest movies ever made. Serving as presenter and guide is the charismatic Slavoj Zizek, acclaimed philosopher and psychoanalyst. With his engaging and passionate approach to thinking, Zizek delves into the hidden language of cinema, uncovering what movies can tell us about ourselves. Whether he is untangling the famously baffling films of David Lynch, or overturning everything you thought you knew about Hitchcock, Zizek illuminates the screen with his passion, intellect, and unfailing sense of humour. THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA cuts its cloth from the very world of the movies it discusses; by shooting at original locations and from replica sets it creates the uncanny illusion that Zizek is speaking from 'within' the films themselves. Together the three parts construct a compelling dialectic of ideas. Described by The Times in London as 'the woman helming this Freudian inquest,' director Sophie Fiennes' collaboration with Slavoj Zizek illustrates the immediacy with which film and television can communicate complex ideas. Says Zizek: 'My big obsession is to make things clear. I can really explain a line of thought if I can somehow illustrate it in a scene from a film. THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA is really about what psychoanalysis can tell us about cinema.'

The sequel to The Pervert's Guide to Cinema sees the reunion of brilliant philosopher Slavoj Zizek with filmmaker Sophie Fiennes, now using their inventive interpretation of moving pictures to examine ideology - the collective fantasies that shape our beliefs and practices.

Portrait of philosopher Slavoj Zizek

Slavoj Zizek, born in 1949 in Ljubljana, psychoanalyst and professor of philosophy, started early on a group of theoreticians who sharpened their thinking of the theses of Jacques Lacan. The Slovenian Lacan School was a spiritual resistance nest in orthodox ex-Yugoslavia, and Slavoj Zizek emerged as a globally operating philosopher-entertainer.

Marx Reloaded is a cultural documentary that examines the relevance of German socialist and philosopher Karl Marx's ideas for understanding the global economic and financial crisis of 2008-09. The crisis triggered the deepest global recession in 70 years and prompted the US government to spend more than 1 trillion dollars in order to rescue its banking system from collapse. Today the full implications of the crisis in Europe and around the world still remain unclear. Nevertheless, should we accept the crisis as an unfortunate side-effect of the free market? Or is there another explanation as to why it happened and its likely effects on our society, our economy and our whole way of life? Written and directed by Jason Barker - himself an experienced writer, lecturer, translator and doctor of philosophy - Marx Reloaded comprises interviews with the world's leading philosophers of Marxism, including those at the forefront of a popular revival in Marxist and communist ideas. The film also includes interviews with skeptics of this revival as well as light-hearted animation sequences which follow Marx's adventures through the matrix of his own ideas.

Guy Debord's landmark cinematic analysis of consumer society is based on his influential sociological book "La société du spectacle" (1967). Debord was a leading member of the avant-garde art movement 'Situationist International'. This cinematic essay uses their method of 'détournement' to decontextualize and rearrange preexisting audiovisual materials and texts to critizise them and create new meaning. The result is a subversive collage of ideological (moving) images from socialist and capitalist societies that are presented here as artefacts of a global media 'spectacle': Social relations between people are mediated by artificial images and false representations that transform humans into mere passive consumers and 'spectators' of their alienated existence. Guy Debord's motivation was to create a radical social critique and a disruptive, anti-illusionist cinema as an antidote and revolutionary tool against the dominant cultural and sociopolitical forces of his time.

The eight-hour series of interviews between Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, filmed by Pierre-André Boutang in 1988-1989. The individual episodes are "A comme Animal," "B comme Boisson," "C comme Culture," "D comme Désir," "E comme Enfance," "F comme Fidélité," "G comme Gauche," "H comme Histoire de la philosophie", "I comme Idée, "J comme Joie", "K comme Kant", "L comme Literature,"M comme Maladie,"N comme Neurologie", "O comme Opéra", "P comme Professeur", "Q comme question," "R comme Résistance", "S comme Style","T comme Tennis","U comme Un", "V comme Voyage", "W comme Wittgenstein, "X & Y comme inconnues," "Z comme Zigzag"

Documentary about French philosopher (and author of deconstructionism) Jacques Derrida, who sparked fierce debate throughout American academia.

An exploration of the man and his ideas, DERRIDA'S ELSEWHERE investigates the parallels between the personal life and the life work of arguably the most important philosopher of the 20th Century, Jacques Derrida. We follow Derrida around his home, office, in the classroom and on his travels as he speaks of the suffering, the challenges and the questions that have conditioned his thought since his childhood in Algeria. The film is woven around readings from Derrida's book Circumfession, evoking a number of seemingly disparate themes including hospitality, religion, sexuality and the place of the subject in philosophy. Derrida shows us the common thread he perceives running though them: responsibility. Incorporating related imagery, DERRIDA'S ELSEWHERE uses footage of the places Derrida knew in his childhood and adolescence in Algeria, photos of his life there, super-8 footage from the 1960's and 70's, and images from Spain. The transitory nature of Place is a concept that has occupied Derrida from youth. He evokes the experience of de-colonization to illustrate his ideas. At the synagogue where his father would bring him as a child, it is clear from the design that it was first an Islamic mosque. It is a mosque again, reconfigured in the wake of de-colonialism. Colonialism and Post-Colonialism figure heavily in Derrida's work. His concept of displacement, of feeling like an immigrant without papers, has its roots in his childhood in Algeria. Influential too are Derrida's Spanish Jewish roots. Through his obsession with the story of Marrand, a 14th Century Jew who practiced his religion in secret, we learn of Derrida's sympathy for secrecy, for the unrevealed. After all, according to Derrida, the absence of Secrecy is a totalitarian society. Filmmaker Safaa Fathy's stated goal is to show the links between Derrida's life and his work. In discussions, he describes his mother and childhood in the same manner as he does ideas, somewhere between affect and concept, at a boundary where a work becomes biography and biography gives birth to a work. DERRIDA'S ELSEWHERE takes us into his worlds - that of his work in Paris and that of his familial and spiritual roots in Algeria and the Spain of Lorca and El Greco. We begin to see how places allow words to appear, producing images that let us catch a glimpse of what's beyond.

Through the experiences of two women in Paris and London, Ghost Dance offers a stunning analysis of the complexity of our conceptions of ghosts memory and the past.

A self-help guide which applies the teachings of philosophers to dealing with life's everyday problems.