Topic

The body

The machine everyone owns and few can service.

13: in film
13:00: average
169 min: in total
29: across the network

The body across the network →

All briefs13

13:00

A History of Violence

David Cronenberg · 2005

David Cronenberg’s 2005 crime thriller adapts a graphic novel into a precise, unsentimental study of identity, memory, and embodied violence. Viggo Mortensen plays Tom Stall, a small-town diner owner whose past as hitman Joey Cusack resurfaces after he kills two robbers. The film tracks the unraveling of his family life and his return to Philadelphia, where violence proves inescapable — not as choice, but as somatic fact. Shot by Peter Suschitzky and scored by Howard Shore, it favours stillness over spectacle and implication over exposition.

13:00

Altered States

Ken Russell · 1980

Altered States (1980), directed by Ken Russell from Paddy Chayefsky’s novel, follows a scientist whose experiments with sensory deprivation and psychoactive drugs trigger a terrifying biological regression. Anchored by William Hurt’s debut performance and Dick Smith’s groundbreaking makeup effects, it merges psychological horror with surrealist science fiction. Though marked by creative conflict between writer and director, the film endures as a formally audacious, physically immersive inquiry into consciousness, identity, and the fragility of the human form.

13:00

Eyes Without a Face

Georges Franju, Claude Sautet · 1960

Eyes Without a Face (1960) is a French arthouse horror film directed by Georges Franju, following a plastic surgeon who kidnaps women to graft their faces onto his disfigured daughter. Shot by Eugen Schüfftan and scored by Maurice Jarre, it sustains a tone of poetic anguish rather than visceral terror. Its restrained performances, deliberate pacing, and clinical visuals have earned it retrospective acclaim as a landmark of moral and aesthetic horror.

13:00

First Man into Space

Robert Day · 1959

First Man into Space (1959) is a British science fiction-horror film directed by Robert Day, following a US Navy pilot who returns from extreme altitude encrusted in meteoric dust and transformed into a blood-dependent creature. Built on a tight budget and grounded in procedural realism, it prioritises physiological logic over myth or metaphor, using restrained performances, functional cinematography, and a lean narrative structure to sustain its central conceit. Though limited by its means, it delivers a coherent, atmospheric, and quietly tragic vision of spaceflight as irreversible bodily violation.

13:00

Flesh for Frankenstein

Paul Morrissey, Antonio Margheriti, Andy Warhol · 1973

Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) is a Paul Morrissey-directed body horror film shot in Rome, starring Udo Kier as a Serbian-obsessed Baron who constructs living specimens from corpses. Its deadpan satire targets eugenics, authoritarianism and sexual repression through grotesque, tactile set-pieces and stilted dialogue. Though credited to Warhol and Margheriti, Morrissey shaped its vision, aided by Luigi Kuveiller’s flat, theatrical cinematography and Claudio Gizzi’s jagged score. It is neither pure parody nor sincere horror, but a conceptual object that demands attention to texture, logic and failure.

13:00

Gray's Anatomy

Steven Soderbergh · 1996

Spalding Gray’s 1996 monologue film, directed by Steven Soderbergh, documents his diagnosis with macular pucker and his turn toward alternative treatments. Filmed in ten days with minimal staging, it relies entirely on Gray’s voice, syntax, and timing. Elliot Davis’s restrained cinematography and Cliff Martinez’s sparse score support rather than interpret. The film balances wit and vulnerability without resolving into either satire or sermon — though its final passages strain under the weight of their own metaphysical drift.

13:00

Hunger

Steve McQueen · 2008

Steve McQueen’s 2008 debut dramatises the 1981 IRA hunger strike in Maze Prison, focusing on Bobby Sands’s final weeks. Shot in stark, immersive style by Sean Bobbitt and edited by Joe Walker, it privileges physical detail over exposition, using long takes, minimal dialogue, and unflinching attention to the body’s decay and resilience. Michael Fassbender lost significant weight for the role. The film premiered at Cannes, winning the Caméra d’Or, and received widespread critical acclaim for its formal rigour and moral gravity.

13:00

Pina

Wim Wenders · 2011

Wim Wenders’ 2011 3D documentary Pina records performances by Tanztheater Wuppertal of four major works by Pina Bausch — Le sacre du printemps, Café Müller, Kontakthof (across three age groups), and Vollmond — filmed shortly after her death in 2009. Intercut are outdoor solos and duets around Wuppertal, accompanied by dancers’ voice-over reflections. Shot by Hélène Louvart and edited by Toni Froschhammer, the film treats choreography as living structure, not historical artefact.

13:00

The Brood

David Cronenberg · 1979

David Cronenberg’s 1979 body horror film follows a man investigating brutal murders tied to his ex-wife’s experimental therapy. Conceived amid Cronenberg’s own custody battle, it externalises psychological rupture as literal, parthenogenetic offspring — dwarf-like creatures born from suppressed rage. Shot in Toronto with clinical restraint, it privileges coherence over catharsis, using flat lighting, sparse scoring, and unadorned performances to sustain dread. Its power lies in its refusal to explain, reassure, or resolve.

13:00

The Shrouds

David Cronenberg · 2024

David Cronenberg’s 2024 film *The Shrouds* follows a widowed inventor who develops ‘GraveTech’, a technology that broadcasts live 3D images of decomposing corpses via modified shrouds. Set in Toronto and conceived as a response to the director’s own bereavement, the film explores grief as a physical, technological, and architectural condition — one that can be hacked, misrendered, and eroticised. With Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, and Guy Pearce, it sustains a tone of clinical unease, privileging conceptual rigour over narrative resolution.

13:00

The Unknown

Tod Browning · 1927

Tod Browning’s 1927 silent horror stars Lon Chaney as Alonzo, a carnival performer who hides his arms to win the affection of Nanon (Joan Crawford). When she develops a phobia of hands, his deception becomes essential — then unsustainable. He chooses amputation to preserve the illusion, only to discover too late that she has moved on. With stark cinematography by Merritt B. Gerstad and ruthless narrative economy, the film charts obsession as a series of irrevocable choices, not a spiral of madness.

13:00

Videodrome

David Cronenberg · 1983

David Cronenberg’s 1983 body horror film follows a Toronto TV executive who discovers a mysterious broadcast signal that induces violent hallucinations and physical mutations. Shot in Toronto with a $6m budget, it uses practical effects, analog video textures, and Howard Shore’s synth score to construct a world where media literally rewires the body. Though a box-office failure, it has endured as a cult touchstone for its fusion of psychosexual theory and visceral craft.

13:00

Under the Skin

Jonathan Glazer · 2013

Jonathan Glazer’s 2013 film adapts Michel Faber’s novel into a stark, sensory-driven study of alien perception. Scarlett Johansson plays an extraterrestrial who preys on men across Scotland, filmed with hidden cameras and minimal dialogue. Dan Landin’s cinematography, Mica Levi’s dissonant score and Paul Watts’ restrained editing sustain a consistent, disorienting viewpoint. The film prioritises texture and duration over exposition, generating unease through omission rather than shock. Acclaimed for its formal rigour, it remains deliberately ambiguous about motive, origin and outcome.