Gothenburg Festival 2022 to experiment with mass hypnosis – The Hollywood Reporter
After locking the audience in a coffin to test the limits of claustrophobia and taking social isolation to the extreme by stranding a single viewer for 7 days on an island in the North Sea, the Swedish Film Festival in Gothenburg will use its event 2022 to experiment with mass hypnosis.
At gala screenings for three films at this year’s festival – Apichatpong Weerasethakuls Memoria with Tilda Swinton, Shirin Neshats The land of dreams with Matt Dillion and Isabella Rosselini and Christian Tafdrup’s psychological thriller Speak No Evil – a hypnotist will perform a mass hypnosis on the audience, “transform the audience’s state of mind according to the mood and theme of the film.” said the organizers on Tuesday. The hypnotist will only break the spell after the screening.
According to Gothenburg’s artistic director Jonas Holmberg, the experiment is intended to “raise questions about submission, violation and control”, questions that have been made all the more relevant by “the past year’s rules and restrictions” introduced during the corona pandemic. Holmberg also pointed to the parallels between hypnosis and the immersive experience of watching a film in a dark cinema.
“Watching a movie at the cinema can be extremely hypnotic. At home, with a tablet, it is much more difficult to maintain the focus you need to be really absorbed by a film, says Holmburg. “The Hypnotic Cinema is both a tribute to and an extension of the experience of watching movies in cinemas.”
Check out the festival’s trailer for its Hypnotic Cinema below:
Gothenburg is notorious for its social experimental stunts. Last year’s festival invited an individual film fan to spend a week watching a film in a converted lighthouse on a rocky island off Sweden’s west coast. The 2019 party included “coffin cinema”: screenings where viewers were locked in a specially designed sarcophagus, the film was projected on the inside of the coffin.
But Gothenburg’s biggest experiment this year may be the attempt to have a personal film festival in the middle of the pandemic. The Palm Springs International Film Festival 2022, which was scheduled to start on January 7, was canceled due to an increase in covid-19 infections. Other January festivals, including Slamdance and Rotterdam, have only gone online in response to the current increase.
The Swedish government has taken a lighter touch when it comes to covid restrictions than many of its European neighbors. The country was never locked up and although there have been capacity constraints and other regulations for cinemas, they have been able to remain open throughout the pandemic.
Sweden, like large parts of Europe, is currently experiencing a new wave of coronavirus infections, driven by the highly contagious omicron variant of the virus. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added Sweden to its list of “level 4” countries that are considered very high risk and issued a statement advising people to “avoid traveling to Sweden.”
However, Gothenburg is still planning for personal screenings at 18 cinemas across the city. The program for the 45th event, which runs January 28-Feb. 6, will feature more than 200 films from 80 countries, with guests “from around the world” scheduled to attend, the festival said on Tuesday.
In parallel with the personal festival, Gothenburg will also show festival films online for viewers in Sweden on its streaming platform Draken. The program for the 45th Gothenburg International Film Festival will be announced on 11 January.