Join neuroscientist Sarah Garfinkel and science historian William Macauley after the film for a short talk and discussion. Find out how cinema became preoccupied with psychological ideas during the 1960s, and how mental health is portrayed in Psycho and other films. This is a free event programmed for the Cheltenham Science Festival Fringe.    

Upon its release in 1973, The Exorcist provoked an outcry about the psychological influence of film. Meanwhile, medical journals reported and sought to scientifically explain numerous cases of ‘possession’ triggered by the film. Join us for a special screening and panel discussion, led by broadcaster and film buff Adam Rutherford, exploring this cult masterpiece, its psychological influence and the ‘pleasure’ of fear.

Cinema gets psychological in this screening and panel discussion of the 1950s seminal classic film The Three Faces of Eve. Delivered as part of trailblazing research project, Demons of the Mind, we explore the interactions between cinema and the psy sciences, then debate the influence of this film on mental health narratives with mental health professionals and historians.   Author and Professor David A. Kirby will be MC, and our panellists will include Historian of Science Dr Ray Macauely, forensic psychologist…

In 1960, Hitchcock’s Psycho established the narrative conventions of future psychological horror and slasher films. What are the ramifications of these depictions for our understanding of dissociative identity and other trauma-related conditions? Join us for a special screening of Psycho and panel discussion between film academics and mental health professionals about the significant and sustained influence of Psycho on mental health narratives. Part of the ‘Demons of the Mind’ project – a collaboration between media studies and science communication scholars from the…

Demons of the Mind screening of The Three Faces of Eve (1957) for the Widescreen Weekend at the National Science and Media Museum (NSMM). Presented in elegant black-and-white CinemaScope, Nunnally Johnson’s psychological drama about a woman's experience and eventual diagnosis of multiple personality disorder (now Disassociative Identity Disorder), features a an Oscar-winning performance from Joanne Woodward. This free screening in the Cubby Broccoli Cinema, Level 1 (NSMM) will be introduced by Dr Tim Snelson, Senior Lecturer in Media History at the University of…

For Mental Health Awareness Week, we will be welcoming film producer and psychiatrist Dr Mina Husain to screen and discuss two of her short films, made in collaboration with director Hamza Bangash. Mina's award-winning short films give voice to South Asian experiences of mental health, neurodiversity and diaspora, particularly those of young people. Her latest film Bhai (2021) invites us to experience the inner worlds of two teenage brothers, one who is on the autism spectrum, amid the hustle and bustle on…

Following our screening of The Three Faces of Eve for Widecreen Weekend in 2021, join us for another fascinating look at the human mind through the lens of film. Terence Fisher’s Dracula: Prince of Darkness, from the iconic Hammer studio, is a quintessential English Gothic horror film that revived interest in the genre, presenting dreamy, disturbing encounters with vampires that are both disconcertingly seductive and hideous. The dream-like atmosphere is enhanced by the widescreen format and the vivid use of…