Internationales Kurzfilmfestival ,,Wie wir leben''
Munich Disability Film Festival - 2001 - Lecture - Paul Darke PhD.
I look at film ( as with genetics) in two ways: the Medical Model and the Social Model. The model I work to is the Social Model primarily and the fundamental basis of the Social Model is that there is no such thing as people with disabilities. We, disabled people in general, are, as such, disabled only by external factors: i.e., it is not us who are disabled it is society that is disabling and oppressive. The Medical Model, on the other hand, advances the ideology that it is us (within and on the individual) who are disabled as a pathological reality; it places the problem within our body and our minds. Thus, it ‘pathologies’ disability as a personal issue. The Medical Model puts the whole problem onto, and within, the individual; so, equally, it individualises disability: ‘….the reason that I can’t get into a building is because I can’t walk if it has steps’. Of course it’s not my problem it has steps it’s the buildings and the ideology of a culture which excludes others in such a way; it is a construct, it is a social factor.
So, it is society disabling me. I don’t have a problem, it is not me with a problem, it is society. Thus, the Social Model is a very different way of looking at things than the Medical Model would and from the interpretation normally used. The most conventional view, the dominant view, is the Medical Model, a paradigm, or ideological nexus, that looks upon disability as a personal tragedy. Whereas in the Social Model ‘disability’ is social oppression: it is not a tragedy that I can not walk but what is a social fact is that society create things that oppress me, excludes me, and disabled people.
Two of the writers in England who are mainly responsible for this in England are Michael Oliver and Colin Barnes. They have recently written a book called Social Policy and Disability and this reduces these models even further so that the Social Model is about, at its basest, identifying social exclusion. Thus, the aim is to achieve, through the application of the Social Model inclusion as opposed to the more insidiously normalisation ideology of integration.
If you look at the Social Model in detail you can see that it talks about lack of education - a lot of disabled people don’t do well in society because we are uneducated and, as such, it is not because we are disabled it is because society has excluded us. The Social Model reveals that discrimination is disability not that we are impaired – it reveals such issues and realities to be social factors not pathologically related to the nature of an impaired body. In employment we suffer discrimination, we get segregated services, we live in poverty and endure inequality – these, by the application of the Social Model, are revealed to be social constructions unrelated to the pathological nature of impairment.
The Social Model talks about three key areas of discrimination: institutional - that’s like government, benefits things, an educational system that creates different education for us from them - that’s institutional. Environmental, physical barriers that exclude us: steps; lack of lifts; and loads of other kinds of barriers. Then there is attitudinal – people’s attitudes towards the disabled that are constructed socially and reinforced by socio-cultural/medical factors such genetics.
The biggest problem the Social Model identifies for us is the hegemony of the Medical Model; the paradigm that places everything within us, in me, when, in fact, disability is a political issue. It is not a personal issue. The application of the Social Model is how I look at films; by applying the Social Model to see what model(s) any given film is using and seeing what it is saying. Is everybody fairly clear on that? Any questions? You can ask questions at any time. It is not me, the disabled, who have to change, it is society and that’s my, and disabled people’s, right.
So, the Social Model is about identifying what is the true cause of disability, it’s not that I can’t walk it’s that society consciously created barriers that exclude me. So, what the Social Model identifies is the social exclusion of us. We still have impairments and that’s the difference: there is disability - social exclusion - and then there’s impairment - which is that I can’t walk. To some extent a very rigid interpretation of impairment is that the two (disability and impairment) have nothing to do with one another; they are totally unrelated.
The Medical Model on the other hand sees disability as an individual thing and as such it’s the enemy. It objectifies us it makes us pathologically aberrant. It individualises what is a social problem and it creates systems and structures that oppress us. For example, social workers oppress us as they are the gatekeepers to services whilst they do not deal with disability. So, society, as part of its oppression and discrimination of us, sets up special schools, therapists, doctors and our lives are dominated by these people in a socially disabling way which is not to do with our impairment. A good example of that in England is that if you are disabled you go to the doctor every three months even if there is nothing wrong with you and they still do it, pointless, except as a form of control and oppression.
Is everybody clear on the differences of the models? Medical Social: if my doctor says I can’t walk that’s about my impairment it not about my disability. Disability - I have a friend who says use the double ‘D’: if you are going to use the word disabled see if you can replace it with the word discrimination. If you can you are using disability in the correct, Social Model Way.
I recognise that we are not there yet. I may go and see my doctor but that’s due to my impairment not because of my disability. That is the distinction between the two words – impairment / disability - which is vitally important. Whereas, for the medical profession, it is all one thing: ‘disability’. The distinction is that if I need to see a doctor I need to see a doctor about my impairment not because of my disability. My disability is the fact that the doctor insists on seeing me every three months un-necessarily. The need to control and regulate the impaired is always about the profession not the person - all I ever wanted to do was get in a wheelchair, give me a wheelchair and I was happy.
We have impairments and that’s what the individual thing is, we are all different in that respect. But we all experience social discrimination, that is the collective aspect of the Social Model.
Any other questions on that? The Social Model is the way I look at what I see; I am going to use that model from now on when looking at films and how they reinforce the pathologising nature of genetics to marginalise disabled people even more that ever.
Perspectives on disability: way of looking at disability. The argument is the Social Model argues, as with most progressive ideas, that it is right the model, the Medical Model is wrong. The Social Model recognises that disability is a social discrimination issue and then there are also the impairments of individuals. Alternatively, the Medical Model pathologises the whole kit and caboodle of impairment and disability.
Anyone else got any views on this? Or am I talking bollocks to you all. No. I think most people agree actually.
Using the Social Model the aim is to identify art, and that includes cinema and images, that individualises disability; art that pathologises impairment as disability. Art so often implies that the reason that a person is in the situation that they are in, in any given movie for example, is due to their individual pathological impairment. For example, this slide is a painting by Millais, The Blind Girl, she is a beggar, she’s poor. The implication is that it is a result of her blindness, whereas the Social Model would say that this is a mystifying perspective because the reason is that it’s much more complex than that and there are many other issues which are marginalised whilst pathologising impairment as disability. Disability is universally eternally.
Although disability is not totally seen as an individual essence as it is in this painting by W.H. Hunt called The finding of the Saviour in the Temple. Here with the disabled beggar, in the left-hand corner, the disability (and impairment) is resulting from sin (given the context). A lot of the individualising stuff of disability in art comes from the main texts that dominate society and in western culture that is the bible. There is a very interesting work on Jewish culture and how texts within that have done the same (Abrams, Judaism and Disability). Alternatively, there is the need for the good body to compare the aberrant one to. So you have the bad: the individual suffering the personal tragedy - for that to work effectively, you have to have the good, the ideal and the supreme and I think this sculpture by Jacob Epstein of the body is the epitome of the good body. The type, image, of the body which artists use – fascistically – is designed to marginal different bodies (be they black, abnormal or sexually other). So you’ve got all of these images which create the good ‘normal’ and the bad ‘abnormal’. Even when its not conventional: these, for example, are two paintings of an different elderly women. A fairly straight forward conventional one (Rembrandt van Rijn’s Portrait of an 83-year-old Woman) but then you get the next slide by Massy (A Grotesque Old Woman); very different interpretations of graceful old age, very different portraits of an elderly woman. Even the titles: ‘Grotesque’, the pejorative, to ‘83-years-old’, the descriptive. Already in the artistic world you are getting the good – normal - and the bad- abnormal. And mark my words, this perspective is still the dominant form of artistic representation of disability.
On occasion some have tried to challenge this, Frida Kahlo is one example; the work she’s done about, not necessarily the Social Model, is work that is about identifying disability from a Social Model perspective. Even when exploring impairment / disability, she is exploring it in a personal way which isn’t reducing it to personal tragedy but is actually saying much more. Other painters, like Paul Kosoff have done the same; there’s another artist film-maker called Steve Dwoskin who is excellent. If you ever go and see on of his films, they are very good. It is about exploring disability in another way, so often what the application of the Social Model would identify is that if something in exploring disability as an external social form as a social expression of discrimination that’s good. It’s a lot more complex than that but we’ll keep it to that for now.
Theatre has done the same: a lot of theatrical productions which have done the same as film, pathologising of impairment as disability, have become films: i.e., The Miracle Worker about Helen Keller. Also, there are many others: A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, which is about a couple’s attempt to deal with a child with cerebral palsy (which was also a successful play in England, written in the 60’s, and is usually playing in a theatre in the UK all the time. Equally, suspect is the fact that it is also often an ‘A’ level text. The play is a deeply personal thing, where the solution of the play is the death of the child, a necessary fact in the play to enable happiness to exist. So, it’s a pretty damming indictment of disabled people from the author. Though it is a 1960’s play it is, tragically for us, a standard text. It also became a film, with Allan Bates, which I would not recommend. Even more recent plays, i.e., Arthur Miller’s Breaking Glass about Kristelnacht, in the rise of Nazism in Germany, used disability in a similar derogatory and metaphorical form. Disability is often used metaphorically for aspects of human nature which are seen as negative: weakness, dependency, ineffectualism and infantilism (be that in individuals or society). Disability is used to reinforce society’s normalising ideologies through the negative use and implications of disability – the very thing that is seen as necessary and in need of genetic rectification. Images of disability reinforce the negative to justify the acts of destruction it seeks to carry out against Others: disabled people. The degree to which they do this is revealed in the degree to which medical hegemony sacrifices a significant number of its own ‘normals’ in order to maintain its control. For example, in carrying out various pre-natal tests to screen out disability over a 1000 ‘normal’ babies are destroyed a year. Now that’s hate.
Television is full of stuff that does exactly the stuff just in a slightly different form. More ‘positive’ representations put a new light on it when it shows the heroic disabled individual and the normalised disabled individual. Such a process, of represented individualisation (and medicalisation), are part of the process of de-politicising the issue of disability onto the personal issue of impairment. So, again, representations are still individualising disability as impairment, but it makes a very clear distinction that if you as a disabled person who wants to get on, the only way you are going to do so is if your more like the ‘normal’. If you are more normal that does not validate disability or impairment or disabled people at all; all it is doing is validating normality - the very thing, through these images, that is used to oppress and reinforce disability (‘double D’ – discrimination). That does not stop it being enjoyable; I absolutely love, for example, Ironside and I watch it most days but there is a deeply suspect ideology behind it.
If we go back in time, films are often come along in very distinct periods and times. You have seen Freaks, the objectifying of disabled people, making them the object of disability, implying that it is nothing to do with society; it is all about them, individualising disability as a deeply negative thing. Freaks, Hunchback of Notre Dame, are good examples. Even right up to today, films like Young Frankenstein follow a similar tradition; but the issue is much more complex. For example, Young Frankenstein is, I personally think, one of the best and most disability politics films of all time (along with The Idiots) but we are not going to go into that today because of the complexities of what it’s dealing with, but it use very standard images.
The distinction I would make from a lot of other writers is that they talk about stereotypes of disability, the freak being one of them. I think there are very few stereotypes of disability, there are archetypes: the presumption is disability uses these images because its true, disabled people are all of these things - they are pathetic, they are dependent, they are a burden, they are vengeful, they are tragic (tosh). Archetypes can be redefined and demystified, as stereotypes if we, the disabled, stand up and say that such archetypes are misrepresentations and wrong. But the presumption is that they are true which is why they are much more difficult to challenge. But again Frankenstein (the original) and Young Frankenstein - see the two films together they are brilliant but one can see the difference immediately.
Comedy uses disability all the time, again often to ridicule the individual though there are examples where it does more than that, or that it is fun. I do not want to say everything is bad (or that x, y or z should not be allowed) but if looked at from the Social Model perspective impairment as disability is used in a very negative way. There are still great things that can be enjoyed about it. Harpo Marx, for example, is to me a master, but his use of muteness is really suspect if one looks at it in a very politically dogmatic way (I do not). The freakish film is still made today. And until the Social Model is universally acknowledged Freaks and its ilk will still be made – even for kids in a film like The Mighty. An American Independent film called Gummo, a very recent, and a very, very doggy film, is much worse than Freaks. Another similar kind of film, I’m just flicking through these 100 slides, is Tell Me That you Love Me Judy Moon, Edward Scissorhand, and Eraserhead, they are of the same ilk.
A revisionist view of disability of this kind of freaky imagery took place after the second world war when, using Martin F. Norden’s label, the dominance of the Noble Warrior came on the imagery scene - we in the UK would more likely call them the Super-Crip (because they are not always war-linked). We call such images the Super-Crip, those who expend their entire lives trying to be normal. The Social Model would say if the individual wants to do that that’s all well and fine but it doesn’t improve the lives of disabled people and actually marginalises those unable to be normalised even more. To extend the debate further I must say that I am not, in this brief lecture/paper getting over the complexities of the issue. If one looks at it very simply, in society some disabled people now are better treated than they have ever been in Western culture - not how we want it but its true. How we are treated and socially integrated has, over the last 200 years, improved enormously. But, and it is the biggest but on earth, the flip side of that is that the population of people who are born disabled is decreasing due to abortion; depending on the impairment, it can be a reduction of almost 100%.
Lets put that in context: is it all right for me to sit up here as a white middle class man who has been to university, who has benefited due to luck, but if you (or me, literally) are going to be born with Down Syndrome you won’t be born - you will not see the light of day - in 99% of cases due to abortion. It is the same with my impairment, Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus. The idea that it is better now has a nightmare flip side which genetics is reinforcing and will ensure the extermination of most congenital disabled people. These images, I believe, reveal that completely and its something that we all should be aware of and it should inform what we do, think and feel and allow around the issue of genetics.
The Nobel Warrior, or Super-Crip is so often picked up. If we look at the whole notion of positive and negative images – a pointless differentiation in my view - the Noble Warrior is a good example. Let me go through some of them: The Men, Marlon Brando; Bad Day at Black Rock, Spencer Tracy; Coming Home, John Voight and Jane Fonda; Inside Moves, Harold Russell’s only other film made 40 years after The Best Years of Our Lives; and even Forrest Gump - not actually Forrest Gump but the other character in the wheelchair played by Gary Sinese. A modern variation on the theme is The Waterdance, its not a war accident but has the same kind of theme and ideology. If you think about most people seeing one of those films or the brave person who normalises themselves to progress and get the rewards of society - even a film like My Left Foot is the same – the image is crass but so hegemonically dominant that it dictates governmental policies and inter-personal relationships between the non-disabled and the disabled). The positive/negative debate about images of disabled people – discriminated against people - is powerful but a retrograde step in the battle to improve the value of disabled people. We, in all these films looked at, depending on how we look at them, can be positive and/or negative.
So, for example if we take the Medical Model as true - I suffer in life because I can’t walk - if I see normalising images of someone who can’t walk but makes the effort, gets fit, walks on crutches, gets up stairs, or what ever impairment it may be, if I believe the Medical Model then this is a positive representation as it tells me what I believe to be the truth (it is not – but that is a separate issue). It is apparently showing me the way forward. But, from the Social Model, it is a negative image because it completely ignores society, blames the individual who does not do that for their marginalisation, or praises the individual for doing individual things, such imagery blames the individual disabled spectator for disability and its resulting discrimination – such images are typically individualistic. The negative / positive debate is so difficult because what one disabled person sees as positive another may see as negative because they are not seeing it as the same thing because they are coming from different interpretative perspectives. I think that makes it easier to understand and why, to convince one another of their arguments won’t work because often they are coming from these models that they are using to interpret – model which are diametrically opposite.
The idea that if disabled people start making their own products – images - it will make a difference; it could do. I think it often will but, obviously, because I come from the Social Model perspective only if such images are constructed within a Social Model paradigm. For example, The Waterdance, with Eric Stoltz, was made by a disabled guy but the disabled person is in Nobel Warrior archetype that is somewhat reactionary and in no way progressive. Again, what specific individuals do is not an issue - we all do what we have to – equally, we don’t live in the Social Model world we live in the hegemonically dominant world of the Medical Model …
Is everybody getting that difference? One of the interesting things about cinema is its obsession with blindness - visual impairment. Which I think is very interesting. I personally feel that it is because its cinema, cinema is something conventional that you see – it is light and shadow. It is about the use of light, thus blindness as a subject is very interesting. Hollywood and most other countries have gone into it in a big way, from films like The Enchanted Cottage and Eyes of the Night - this is a blind detective story in which the detective gets his man at the end because he turns the lights out. I love cinema even though I may be sounding very negative but I love seeing what it does and how it does it. For example, this is a picture from Torch Song with Michael Wilding and Joan Crawford. It is all about looking and seeing the whole picture - which is a man at a piano in his tweeds, nice, got a suit on, and there’s a woman next to him who is showing herself of like there is no tomorrow. But obviously as a blind man Wilding is looking far off in to the distance unable to see the beauty in front of him. That’s what is so interesting about cinema; how it constantly creates this kind of mis-en-scene, a cinematic construction which is, and they so often are, wonderful, incredibly creative.
This is a still from the film Night Song, which again I love, a wonderful example because the blind man is in bed in a hospital ward and, conventionally, it would be quite a closed ward, but not this ward. The guy is blind (awaiting a cure) so you must have out of his window the most spectacular view – a view he cannot see. Again, this is about marginalising blindness, denigrating the blind, but its not just the beauty of the scene construction, it is saying that to not see – be sighted - you are missing out on life. It is making very basic statements. There are many more examples.
Disabled woman don’t appear very much, disabled black people even less, the argument for that is that, as Aristotle once said: ‘women are but disabled men’. Women are already disabled by being women so if you want to marginalise women who are disabled you just have to show women; that’s the logic of it. The same is true of black images of disability – they are not necessary in the construction of normality as they are the other.
People with a Learning Difficulty don’t get much of a better deal either, again it comes back to this thing about society. It, society, is rewarding disabled people who attempt to normalise themselves: you get jobs if you do the right things. Cinema reveals this process to the audience but equally it reveals by its absence that society is also practising mass extermination of disabled people of certain groups: people with Spina Bifida, Downs Syndrome, et cetera. You are just not going to be born and that list is growing (genetics will extend it more and more). Thus, such group are not in cinema’s repertoire - so society is dealing with these complexities.
One of the few LD characters to appear is Forrest Gump, there is also Lenny in Of Mice and Men. Fundamentally my perspective of images of disability is that disability is used in order to create what the ‘normal’ is in opposition to what abnormality – impairment as disability – is. In society the ‘normal’ doesn’t actually exist, it only exists in opposition to the abnormal - that’s why there are so many images of disability in cinema and culture – including disability television. There are 1000s in UK alone and some disabled people would argue that disabled people are invisible in the television, invisible on the cinema, not on the stage, et cetera, but images of us are, quite literally everywhere. One of the beauties of how it is done is that you don’t see it, as such, that itself reveals it to be complex but not invisible. Disability is not represented but impairment is unavoidable if you exist in culture. But medically, socially and culturally (and the cultural notion of genetics simply perpetuates the illusions and delusions that a normal exists) impairment as disability is used to create the normal; fundamentally, by saying what is good and what is bad in a comprehensively corporeal way that is easily understood by all.
So the good disabled person is, or what often disabled people will sadly say is positive, is the disabled person who is married has kids has a nice job, but that that image bears no relationship to most disable people conceived is irrelevant – most are terminated with malice. Equally, in England, for example, 80% of disabled people live in poverty – so the normalised images of the disabled person as a fully constituted citizen of the state has no relationship to reality. What it does do, conversely, is create the negative of disability which is the bad, the personal tragedy, the miserableness of it (from a Medical Model perspective). It is saying that if your not normal that’s the kind of life you can expect so make sure you stay normal or all those other things are down that line.
On that basis what to me is positive, not positive but good, are those images that challenge the whole concept / dichotomy of normal / abnormal; film’s that set out to undermine those two distinctions are the best example of what is good from both a disability perspective but also creatively. The best example would be The Idiots by Lars von Trier, a film that came out last year; I don’t have slides of that. Two of the previous films to do this were both Spanish: El Cochetito – ‘The Wheelchair’ - in the 1950s and Accion Mutante, because they challenge the whole concept of what is normal. They don’t necessarily do it well but at least they try. That is the challenge ahead – to reveal to the normal that they do not exist and then, and only then, will they stop trying to destroy us.
Keywords
Archetypal
Mystification
Iconography
Mise en scene
Metaphor
Melodrama
Mind-body dualism
Making special
Catharsis
Aesthetics
Aesthetic distance – suspension of disbelief
Acculturation
Atavism
Always-already read – frederick jameson
Simulacrum
Verisimilutude
Ideology – common sense – set of beliefs – ideological effect
Idealism
Reason can subsume suffering under concepts – Theodor Adorno
Give suffering a language (harold schweizer) by calling it suffering
Schopenhauer – aesthetic: a knowledge without desire
Aesthetic standards presented as essential are void now as they are neither timeless nor universal; they reflect the values and beliefs of euro-patriarchy. (Mary Devereaux)
Key Disability Films for Future Reference
A Day In The Death Of Joe Egg GB 1970 (Released 1972) writer Peter Nichols (from his own play) director Peter Medak
music Elgar
The Raging Moon GB 1970 (USA title: Long Ago Tomorrow)
writer director Bryan Forbes (from a novel by Peter Marshall)
Malcolm McDowell, Nanette Newman, Georgia Brown, Michael Flanders
The Elephant Man EMI/Brooksfilms (Stuart Cornfield)
US 1980 director David Lynch photography Freddie Francis
John Hurt, Anthony Hopkins, Freddie Jones, John Gielgud, Michael Elphick
Whose Life Is It Anyway?
US 1981 writer Brian Clark (from his play) and Reginald Rose
director John Badham
cast Richard Dreyfuss, John Cassavetes, Christine Lahti, Bob Balaban
Duet For One
GB 1987 writers Tom Kempinski (from his play), Jeremy Lipp
and Andrei Konchalovsky
director Andrei Konchalovsky music Bach (and various others)
Julie Andrews, Alan Bates, Max Von Sydow, Rupert Everett, Liam Neeson
My Left Foot International/RTE (Noel Pearson)
GB 1989 writers Shane Connaughton and Jim Sheridan
(from book by Christy Brown) director Jim Sheridan
Daniel Day-Lewis, Ruth McCabe, Fiona Shaw, Ray McAnally, B. Fricker
Other Disability Films for Future Reference
Accion Mutante Spain 1995 Dir: Alex de la Iglesia
Afraid of the Dark GB 1992 Dir: Mark Peploe
The African Queen GB 1951 Dir: John Huston
Almost an Angel US 1990 Dir: John Cornell
Annie Hall US 1977 Dir: Woody Allen
Annie’s Coming Out Australia 1984 Dir: Gil Brealey
Antonia’s Line Holland 1995 Dir: Marleen Gorris
Bad Boy Bubby Australia 1993 Dir: Rolf de Heer
Bad Day at Black Rock US 1955 Dir: John Sturges
Batman Returns US 1992 Dir: Tim Burton
Baxter GB 1972 Dir: Lionel Jeffries
The Best Years of Our Lives US 1946 Dir: William Wyler
Beyond the Stars US/Canada 1988 Dir: David Saperstein
The Big Lebowski US 1998 Dir: Joel Cohen
Bitter Moon GB 1992 Dir: Roman Polanski
Blind Fury US 1989 Dir: Phillip Noyce
Blind Terror GB 1971 Dir: Richard Fleischer
Blink US 1994 Dir: Michael Apted
Born on the Fourth of July US 1989 Dir: Oliver Stone
The Boy Who Could Fly US 1986 Dir: Nick Castle
Breaking the Waves Denmark 1996 Dir: Lars Von Trier
Brimstone and Treacle GB 1982 Dir: Richard Loncraine
Broken Silence Germany 1996 Dir: Caroline Link
La Buena Estrella Spain 1997 Dir: Ricardo Franco
Cactus Australia 1986 Dir: Paul Cox
Carlito’s Way US 1993 Dir: Brian de Palma
Carry On ... (generic) GB 1958 >1992 Dir: G. Thomas / R. Thomas
Cat O’Nine Tails Italy 1971 Dir: Dario Argento
Charly US 1968 Dir: Ralph Nelson
Children of a Lesser God US 1986 Dir: Randa Haines
A Christmas Carol US 1938 Dir: E.L. Marin
Citizen Kane US 1941 Dir: Orson Wells
A Clockwork Orange GB 1971 Dir: Stanley Kubrick
Coming Home US 1978 Dir: Hal Ashby
Crash US 1977 Dir: Charles Band
Crash Canada 1996 Dir: David Cronenberg
Crescendo GB 1969 Dir: Alan Gibson
Crush New Zealand 1992 Dir: Alison Maclean
Cutter’s Way US 1981 Dir: Ivan Passer
Dance Me To My Song Australia 1998 Dir: Rolf de Heer
The Dark Angel US 1935 Dir: Sidney Franklin
Dark City US 1997 Dir: Alex Proyas
Dark Victory US 1939 Dir: Edmund Goulding
Day of the Locust US 1975 Dir: John Schlesinger
Dolores Claiborne US 1995 Dir: Taylor Hackford
Dragonwyck US 1946 Dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
The Eighth Day Belgium/France 1996 Dir: Jaco Van Dormael
Elmer Gantry US 1960 Dir: Richard Brooks
The Enchanted Cottage US 1945 Dir: John Cromwell
Ethan Frome US/GB 1993 Dir: John Madden
Eye of the Cat US 1969 Dir: David Lowell Rich
Eye of the Needle GB 1981 Dir: Richard Marquand
Faster Pussycat Kill Kill! US 1966 Dir: Russ Meyer
Forrest Gump US 1994 Dir: Robert Zemeckis
Four Weddings and a Funeral GB 1994 Dir: Mike Newell
Frankenstein US 1931 Dir: James Whale
Frankie Starlight GB/US 1995 Dir: Michael Lindsey-Hogg
Freaks US 1932 Dir: Tod Browning
Gattaca US 1997 Dir: Andrew Niccol
Gigot US 1962 Dir: Gene Kelly
Go Now (aka Love Bites: Go Now) GB 1996 Dir: Michael Winterbottom
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly Italy 1966 Dir: Sergio Leone
Gummo US 1997 Dir: Harmony Korine
Hana Bi Japan 1997 Dir: Takeshi Kitano
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter US 1968 Dir: Robert Ellis Miller
Hearts of Fire US 1992 Dir: Jeff Bleckner
Hilary and Jackie GB 1998 Dir: Anand Tucker
The Horse Whisperer US 1998 Dir: Robert Redford
The Hunchback of Notre Dame US 1923 (silent) Dir: Wallace Worsley
The Hunchback of Notre Dame US 1939 Dir: William Dieterle
The Hunchback of Notre Dame France/Italy 1956 Dir: Jean Delannoy
The Hunchback of Notre Dame US 1996 Dir: G. Trousdale and K. Wise
Ich Klage Na Germany 1941 Dir. Wolfgang Liebeneiner
I Don’t Want to be Born GB 1975 Dir: Peter Sasdy
The Idiots Denmark 1998 Dir: Lars Von Trier
In the Company of Men US 1997 Dir: Neil LeBute
Jennifer 8 US 1992 Dir: Bruce Robinson
Jobman S. Africa 1990 Dir: D. Roodt
Johnny Belinda US 1948 Dir: Jean Negulesco
Journey To Knock GB 1991 Dir: David Wheatley
Junk Mail Norway 1997 Dir: Pal Sletaune
Just the Way You Are US 1984 Dir: Eduardo Molinaro
Kingpin US 1996 Dir: P. & B. Farrelly
Kings Row US 1942 Dir: Sam Wood
Kiss of Death US 1947 Dir: Henry Hathaway
Lady Chatterley GB 1993 Dir: Ken Russell
Lady Chatterley’s Lover GB 1981 Dir: Just Jaeckin
The Lawnmower Man US 1992 Dir: Brett Leonard
Leap of Faith US 1992 Dir: Richard Pearce
Life Begins at Eight-Thirty US 1942 Dir: Irving Pichel
Live Flesh Spain 1997 Dir: Pedro Almodovar
Lolita GB 1962 Dir: Stanley Kubrick
Magnificent Obsession US 1954 Dir: Douglas Sirk
Mandy GB 1952 Dir: Alexander Mackendrick
A Man on the Beach GB 1956 Dir: Jospeh Losey
The Man with the Golden Arm US 1956 Dir: Otto Preminger
The Men US 1950 Dir: Fred Zinnemann
Midnight Cowboy US 1969 Dir: John Schlesinger
The Mighty US 1998 Dir: Peter Chelsom
The Miracle Woman US 1931 Dir: Frank Capra
The Miracle Worker US 1962 Dir: Arthue Penn
Monkey Shines US 1988 Dir: George Romero
Mr Holland’s Opus US 1995 Dir: Stephen Herek
The Muppet Christmas Carol US 1993 Dir: Brian Hanson
Mute Witness GB 1995 Dir: Anthony Waller
Night Song US 1947 Dir: John Cromwell
Notorious Landlady GB 1962 Dir: Richard Quine
No Trees in the Street GB 1958 Dir: J. Lee Thompson
On Dangerous Ground US 1951 Dir: Nicholas Ray
Passion Fish US 1992 Dir: John Sayles
A Patch of Blue US 1965 Dir: Guy Green
Paula US 1952 Dir: Rudolph Mate
Paulie US 1998 Dir: John Roberts
The People vs. Larry Flint US 1996 Dir: Milos Forman
Persons Unknown US 1996 Dir: George Hickenlooper
The Piano Australia 1993 Dir: Jane Campion
Poulet au Vinaigre France 1984 Dir: Claude Chabrol
Rain Man US 1988 Dir: Barry Levinson
Reach for the Sky GB 1956 Dir: Lewis Gilbert
The Road To Wellville US 1994 Dir: Alan Parker
Salon Kitty France/Germany 1978 Dir: Tinto Brass
Santa Sangre Italy 1989 Dir. A. Jodorowski
Saturday Night Fever US 1977 Dir: John Badham
Scrooge GB 1951 Dir: B.D. Hurst
Scrooge GB 1970 Dir: Ronald Neame
Scrooged US 1988 Dir: Richard Donner
The Secret Garden US 1993 Dir: Agnieszka Holland
The Seventh Seal Sweden 1957 Dir: Ingmar Bergman
Short Circuit US 1988 Dir: John Badham
Sick: The Life and Death of
Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist US 1997 Dir: K. Dick
Sitcom France 1997 Dir: Francois Ozon
Sixth Happiness GB 1997 Dir: Waris Hussein
Sling Blade US 1996 Dir: Billy Bob Thornton
Sorry, Wrong Number US 1948 Dir: Anatole Litvak
The Spiral Staircase US 1945 Dir: Robert Siodmak
Starship Troopers US 1997 Dir: Paul Verhoeven
The Story of
Alexander Graham Bell US 1939 Dir: Irving Cummings
The Story of Esther Costello GB 1957 Dir: David Miller
The Stratton Story US 1949 Dir: Sam Wood
The Switch US 1993 Dir: Bobby Roth
Tell Me That You Love Me,
Junie Moon US 1970 Dir: Otto Preminger
There’s Something About Mary US 1998 Dir: P. & B. Farrelly
Touch US 1997 Dir: Paul Schrader
Wait Until Dark US 1967 Dir: Terence Young
The Walking Stick GB 1970 Dir: Eric Trill
Walter GB 1982 Dir: Stephen Frears
Walter and June GB 1983 Dir: Stephen Frears
War Games US 1983 Dir: John Badham
The Waterdance US 1992 Dir: N. Jimenez & S. Michael
Whatever Happened
To Baby Jane? US 1962 Dir: Robert Aldrich
The Wheelchair Spain 1959 Dir: Marco Ferreri
Wild at Heart US 1990 Dir: David Lynch
Woman of Straw GB 1964 Dir: Basil Dearden
Young Frankenstein US 1974 Dir: Mel Brookes
A Zed and Two Noughts GB 1985 Dir: Peter Greenaway