WR: Mysteries of the Organism
@ Block Museum
40 Arts Circle Dr, Evanston, IL 60208
Opening Friday, February 3rd, from 7PM - 9PM
WR: Mysteries of the Organism
(Dušan Makavejev, 1971, Yugoslavia, 35mm, 84 min.)
WR stands for Wilhelm Reich—the controversial Austrian psychotherapist who believed in a transindividual sexual energy called “orgone.” Reich sought to combine Marxist theory and psychoanalysis, arguing that individual neuroses were a product of socioeconomic oppression, and could be cured through orgasm. Dušan Makavejev’s playful 1971 film mixes biographical information about Reich, documentary footage of some of his last remaining disciples in the United States, and an off-kilter narrative following a militant Yugoslavian woman as she proselytizes Reich’s theories. An example of the “Black Wave” of Yugoslavian filmmaking, WR: Mysteries of the Organism was accused of deriding the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and was banned for sixteen years. And if the words “ideologically harmful” don’t pique your interest alone, then perhaps you can be seduced by the prospect of plaster casts of erections, the absurd seduction of a Soviet celebrity figure skater, undue decapitations, and a whole lot of free love.
About the Series:
“The Gay Left”: Homosexuality in the Era of Late Socialism
In an East Berlin gay bar in 1989, an old man explains his commitment to the communist party’s project of equality after World War II: “We stopped mankind’s exploitation by mankind. Now it does not matter if the person you work with is a Jew or whatever. Except gays. They were forgotten somehow.”The only official film from the German Democratic Republic dealing with homosexuality, “Coming Out”, by Heiner Carow, ends with these lines.Similarly, this film series asks how the ideologies of communism, socialism, and capitalism address sexual minorities.
Including work from both sides of the Iron Curtain, “The Gay Left” brings multiple perspectives and historical moments into conversation in order to fight against forgetting.
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Tags: Block Museum, Dušan Makavejev, Evanston, The Gay Left: Homosexuality in the Era of Late Socialism, WR: Mysteries of the Organism
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