What if you could watch Socrates, on film, rehearsing his Socratic dialogues? What if there was footage of Descartes, Thoreau, or Shakespeare as themselves at work and in their daily life? Might we now look at these figures differently, with perhaps a deeper understanding of their work and lives?”

As a guide to critical theory this season is a screening of Theory Documentaries from the Jacques Lacan’s 1974 television appearance to Zizek’s 2006 documentary Zizek! that follows him across the globe giving a “compelling portrait of an intellectual maverick”. Each documentary will be accompanied with a short introduction to theory given by academics and guest speakers in the field. This season is an attempt at a “beginners guide to critical theory” (a possible alternative title), featuring the works of Lacan, Zizek and Derrida.

Described as the 'Elvis of Theory' Slavoj Zizek is a Slovenian-born political philosopher and cultural critic. He was described by Terry Eagleton as the “most formidably brilliant” recent theorist to have emerged from Continental Europe. Zizek’s work is infamously idiosyncratic. A brilliant personal portrait of a controversial and brilliant mind…

Introduced by Robert Lapsley, author of Film Theory: an Introduction