FilmScene 101: Cinema Summer School
"The work of a great stylist with a uniquely disturbing attraction to, and vision of, the frontier between life and death."—Paul Julian Smith, Sight & Sound
Screening features a FilmScene 101 discussion by University of Iowa Cinematic Arts graduate students Jeremy Laughery and Chris Wei
The most personal film by Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth) is also among his most frightening and emotionally layered. Set during the final week of the Spanish Civil War, we follow a ten-year-old boy who, after his freedom-fighting father is killed, is sent to a haunted rural orphanage full of terrible secrets. Del Toro effectively combines gothic ghost story, murder mystery, and historical melodrama in a stylish concoction that reminds us that the scariest monsters are often the human ones.
Post-screening discussion:
Focuses on Guillermo del Toro's signature interests in politics, childhood, and genre. Photographic technology plays a provocative role in the story, as it invokes theoretical discourses about indexicality, (in)animation, (un)death, etc. Additionally, The Devil’s Backbone invites considerations of history, affect, memory, and trauma. Jeremy Laughery studies horror, surveillance, and new media technology. Chris Wei studies memory, embodiment, and death/resurrection.
