Possession

Heralded as "quite simply one of the most audaciously unhinged and alarming movies of all time, Possession’s impact on horror cinema cannot be overstated. In Possession: Dreams of Suffering and Sanity, Kelso uses Zulawski’s film as a reflecting surface to explore the trials of separation and the doomed complexity intrinsic to all modern relationships (by way of Kristeva, Fisher, and Von Franz).

Set in the haunted house of pre-unification Berlin, Possession gained initial notoriety as a Video Nasty of particular ill-repute. It has since been reappraised and heralded as an art-horror classic. Part film study, part naked memoir, Possession: Dreams of Suffering and Sanity is full of new insight into the film once reductively described by its own director as, simply, a move about ‘a woman who fucks an octopus’. Featuring interviews with those involved in the films production, key members of the Polish academic film community, and a few celebrity fans, Kelso will take you on a dark odyssey through one man’s dreams, his suffering and his sanity.