Imagine Fantastic Film Festival 2023 podcast series explores the 2023 festival theme - Fantastic Alchemy. The series consists of four episodes, which correspond with 4 elements of alchemy that we find especially relevant to us nowadays - Narrative, Identity, Technology, and Substance. In this episode we explore the topic of NARRATIVE, examining how the power of interpretation can transform its objects, and radically alter the way that we see and engage with the world around us. We’ll look into George Sluijzer’s 1988 masterpiece Spoorloos, arguably one of the greatest Dutch films ever made, and try to reframe it as a horror and alchemical text per se with the help of our guests - Karen Pinkus, a professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Cornell University, and a British film critic and writer Christina Brennan.

Hosted by Hugo Emmerzael and Stanislaw Liguzinski. Produced by Inez de Coo. Edited by Tom Ooms.

IMAGINE PROGRAMME MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE:

-Screening of Spoorloos, dir. George Sluizer (Fantastic Alchemy: Narrative) | 28 October 2023 (LAB111) & 3 November 2023 (FilmHallen 2)

- Screening of Eureka, dir. Nicolas Roeg (Fantastic Alchemy: Identity) | 26 October (FilmHallen 2) & 1 November (LAB111 2)

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE:

Books

-Karen Pinkus, Alchemical Mercury: A Theory of Ambivalence, Stanford University Press 2009- Christina Brennan, Devil's Advocates: The Vanishing, Liverpool University Press 2024 (expected)

-Tim Krabbé, The Golden Egg (Dutch: Het Gouden Ei), various editions

-Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, University of Chicago Press 2005

Films

-Spoorloos (1988), dir. George Sluizer

-The Vanishing (1993), dir. George Sluizer

-The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), dir. Tobe Hooper