PRESS RELEASE
THE HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE PRESENTS
ANDRZEJ ZULAWSKI’S POSSESSION
November 17 – 25, 2012
CAMBRIDGE, MA: The Harvard Film Archive is pleased to present ANDRZEJ ZULAWSKI’S POSSESSION from November 17 through 25, 2012
About the film:
Polish writer-director Andrei Zulawski (b. 1940) remains a controversial figure among cinephiles. Working first in Poland and later in France, his no-holds-barred filmmaking has generated a number of unnerving works from various genres: absurdist science fiction that fuses Tarkovsky and Herzog, Kafkaesque black comedy-cum-war film, and sanguinary melodrama. Topping them all is this feverish character study of a man who comes unglued when his wife leaves him. Here Zulawski blends Polanskiesque uncanny and Bergmanian psychodrama with the then-burgeoning subgenre of body horrorassociated with Alien and early Cronenberg. In addition, the setting – a grim Berlin neighborhood, near the Berlin Wall – suggests that the film may also be a particularly abject political allegory. The nightmarish result became an immediate cult classic, even though it was shorn of so much of its sex and violence for its initial US release that it lost a third of its running time. This re-release of the full-length version gives audiences a chance to marvel at the fearless performances by Sam Neill and especially Isabelle Adjani asboth the faithless wife and her doppelganger.
Directed by Andrzej Zulawski. With Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, Margit Carstensen
France/West Germany 1981, 35mm, color, 127 min
Film schedule:
Saturday November 17 at 7pm
Saturday November 17 at 9:30pm
Saturday November 24 at 7pm
Sunday November 25 at 4:30pm
Sunday November 25 at 7pm
This press release and photos are available for download on the press page of the Harvard Film Archive’s website: http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/general_info.html#press. The user name and password are hfapress. Please contact bgravely@fas.harvard.edu for screeners, additional photos, or more information.
Harvard Film Archive
24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 495-4700
http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa
General Admission Tickets $9, $7 Non-Harvard Students, Seniors, Harvard Faculty and Staff. Harvard students free
Special event tickets (for in-person appearances) are $12.
Tickets go on sale 45 minutes prior to show time. The HFA does not do advance ticket sales.