Live: GENDERED ARCHETYPES IN FILM 2: The (Un)Holy Child

MON 14 MAR – 19:30 TO 21:30

Lumière Cinema, Bassin 88

Kevin Toma
Film Critic and Composer

Children are often seen as a blank page; as creatures that – unlike adults – have not yet been spoiled by harsh reality. This remains a concept that we stubbornly want to believe in and which we like to keep alive through art, literature and film. But certainly in films, children keep appearing who put up strong resistance to their supposed innocence, and have good reason for doing so. Thanks to horror films like The Exorcist, The Omen and Rosemary’s Baby, the monstrous bad child has grown into an archetype that is just as powerful and meaningful as its naive counterpart. In The (Un)Holy Child, which is interspersed with film excerpts, film journalist Kevin Toma (de Volkskrant) looks at these archetypes and the role played in them by gender. If girls are considered to be more innocent and pure than boys, isn’t it then even more powerful and threatening when they reveal their monstrous side? And what does the (un)holy child actually want to tell us?