THE PHILOCTETES CENTER
For the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination
invites you to a screening of

Writer of O

Written, and directed by
Pola Rapaport

Friday, April 15, 2005 at 7:30 P.M.
in the Auditorium of The New York Psychoanalytic Institute
247 East 82nd Street, New York, NY 10028

The evening's event is presented in collaboration with Film Forum, New York's leading nonprofit cinema for independent and repertory cinema. The Philoctetes Center and Film Forum are working together on a number of film-related programs. WRITER OF O opens theatrically on May 4 at Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street. The Philoctetes Center's mission is to foster the study of imagination -- funding research, organizing roundtable discussions, offering courses and lecture programs. The Center is also developing a web-based clearing house on work related to the imagination

The Philoctetes Center is honored to present WRITER OF O as the fourth in its Film Series. Published in Paris in 1954, STORY OF O was an immediate bestseller and literary scandal: an elegantly written S&M fantasy that had all the hallmarks of being an autobiographical account by the pseudonymous Pauline Reage. In 1994, Dominique Aury, a mild-mannered editor at the prestigious Gallimard publisher revealed her authorship. In this documentary, to which Dominque Aury gave her blessing, Pola Rapaport explores Auryıs inspiration, recreating the world of 50s literary Paris and setting it against dramatic sequences that bring the book to life. In the film, Dominique Aury and other French intellectuals speak to the complicated relationship between sexuality and power, submission and freedom, liberation and self-agnegation. Dominique Aury died in 1998 at the age of 90, well before the completion of the film. The Philoctetes Center is delighted that Pola Rapaport, the filmıs director, will be present at the screening and will participate in the discussion.

   
  "With remarkable intelligence, Pola Rapaport ...has chosen to tell the real story that [Story of O] holds hidden between the lines. To do so, she put Dominique Aury at the center of her filmŠ Using documentary footage, some of it not previously seen, the film shows her at various periods [of her life]... As a very old woman...Dominique Aury speaks, with great tenderness, about just how far and in what directions love can take one...." Le Monde, December 13, 2004

Moderator:
Roger Copeland is Professor of Theater and Dance at Oberlin College. His essays about theater, dance, and film have appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice,The New Republic, Film Comment, and Partisan Review. He is the author of What Is Dance? and Merce Cunningham: The Modernizing of Modern Dance.

Panelists:
Toni Bentley is a former dancer with the New York City Ballet, and author of five books including The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir, Winter Season: A Dancer's Journal, and Sisters of Salome. She has written for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Playboy and The New York Review of Books.

Daphne Merkin is a critic and novelist and has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker The New Republic, and The New York Times Book Review. She is the author of Enchantment and Dreaming of Hitler.

Lois Oppenheim is Professor of French and Chair of the Department of French, German, and Russian at Montclair State University. She is the author of The Painted Word: Samuel Beckett's Dialogue With Art and A Curious Intimacy: Art and Neuro-Psychoanalysis, among others.

Pola Rapaport is the writer and director of Writer of O, Family Secret (2000) and, Blind Light (1997)

WRITER OF O is presented courtesy of its distributor, Zeitgeist Films.

This program is free and open to the public. Seating is limited on a first come basis.
Refreshments will be served following the program.