Join Me for an Online Witchy Film Class October 28

Join me on Thursday, October 28 at 7:00 p.m. Pacific for Our Bodies, Our Spells: Witches’ Bodies in Film, a virtual film appreciation class in the Seattle International Film Festival’s ongoing What the Femme class series.

In folklore and film, witches have many tools at their disposal to charm, disarm, and harm. One is their own body, whether it’s “by the pricking of my thumbs” for a couple of drops of blood, or seducing someone, or allowing themselves to be possessed by a demon or other entity. In trial records and the horrific Malleus Maleficarum, the seventeenth-century handbook for questioning witches, it was obvious that inquisitors knew this, too, because they used all sorts of means to limit women’s access to their own body magic, such as shaving their heads so they couldn’t weave spells with their hair.

Women’s bodies and how we display, portray, and look at them have long been a core theme in feminist film analysis, too. In this class we’ll use lecture, film clips, and group discussion to explore how witches use their bodies in several films, and in some cases how their bodies are used against them. We’ll examine films such as The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Suspiria (2018), Häxan, Return of the Witch (1952), Mystics in Bali, Outcast (2010) and others through the lenses of history, folklore, and feminist critique.

This is going to fun, folks. Come celebrate Spooky Month with me. This is the most wonderful time of the year, after all.

Sign up on the Seattle International Film Festival website.