“We want to raise questions about submission, transgression and control”, said Jonas Holmberg, artistic director of the Festival
Would you dare to lose control of your conscience? That’s the question the organizers of the Gothenburg Film Festival, which plan to hypnotize audiences, are literally asking.
According to The Drum, “The Hypnotic Cinema” aims to intensify the cinematographic experience of visitors with an almost two-minute video featuring some easter eggs from films such as Donnie Darko, The Shining, The Matrix and It – The thing.
“Last year’s rules and restrictions gave us an idea of how to keep order in society and what really governs people’s thoughts and behavior. Do we make decisions with the independence we like to think? With The Hypnotic Cinema, we want to raise questions about submission, transgression and control,” Jonas Holmberg, artistic director of the Gothenburg Film Festival, told The Drum.
The Swedish festival is known for using quite different marketing. In one of the editions, visitors were already placed in coffins, in homage to the classic Dracula. During the pandemic, event organizers took social distancing to the extreme, putting a single person on an island to watch movies alone for an entire week.
