10th European Psychoanalytic Film Festival
London, 31 October – 3 November 2019
Please click here for a summary of the work of epff over the past twenty years.
2019 - The End
Each end is a new beginning
We have chosen The End as the main theme for this 10th European Psychoanalytic Film Festival (epff10) in the hope that it would give those attending it thought-provoking opportunities to review different kinds of endings in movies – happy ends, open ends, ambiguous ends, unexpected ends – and to explore the criteria used by screenwriters and directors in order to decide how to end their works.
Incidentally, films used to have the words The End on their last frames (as if spectators would not otherwise be aware that it was about time for them to get up and leave the cinema!), though providing such redundant information is no longer fashionable nowadays.
Another reason why the theme of this Festival is relevant to us is because, since the early days of psychoanalysis, there has always been an interest in how to end our open-ended form of therapy - and when, and why, and who should decide about it. We hope that in our discussions about the films to be screened at epff10 links could be made between the way their makers have chosen to end them and the way we psychoanalysts end our work with patients.
‘A flower that blossoms only for a single night does not seem to us on that account less lovely’, Freud wrote in his article On transience. ‘Nor can I understand any better why the beauty and perfection of a work of art or of an intellectual achievement should lose its worth because of its temporal limitation’ (1916, Standard Edition Vol. 14, p. 306).
All things are destined to come to an end: flowers, stone buildings, books, festivals, films… and our own lives. But it could also be claimed that nothing ever ends and that, instead, all undergoes transformation. Maybe a movie, then, will be the ‘day residue’ for a dream, or remain with us in the shape of an indelible memory, or become the opportunity to start a fascinating conversation with a stranger…
Honorary President: Bernardo Bertolucci
Honorary Consultants: Ian Christie, Peter W. Evans, Laura Mulvey, Irina M. Nistor, Catherine Portuges
Organising Committee: Lesley Caldwell, Peter W. Evans, Michael Halton, Cheryl Moskowitz, Kannan Navaratnem
Director: Andrea Sabbadini
Since launching in 2001, the European Psychoanalytic Film Festival (epff) has grown into a varied, lively and very popular event, attracting hundreds of people interested in film and psychoanalysis from all over the world.
Directed by BPAS psychoanalyst Andrea Sabbadini, the epff gathers together lovers of film, psychoanalysts, filmmakers, scholars and critics, to watch, discuss and reflect upon a selection of excellent films over the course of a weekend.
Take a look at our highlights pages from epff7, epff8 and epff9.