Program Note
It is perhaps natural that films that emerge as a marvel of modern technology fascinate people of that era, igniting their interest in supernatural powers akin to magic and sorcery. What meanings, if any, did the primitive and sinister folklore and superstitions of certain regions hold in the 20th century, famously full of belief in science and rationality? Were they a rich literary asset? Or was it nonsense that needed to be explained logically? Or pathological conditions that needed to be treated through modern psychiatric approaches? Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan, which always takes the forefront when discussing the history of folk horror, refuses to be categorized. Its free-spirited style navigates between horror films, cultural anthropology documentaries, reenactments, and animation, while dealing with demons, witches, sorcery, and superstition from around the world, attempting to organize these from the perspective of psychopathology. The film’s perspective, which oscillates between suggestive visual exploitation, the desire for anthropological documentation, and the presentation of modern rationality through its dogmatic sermons, is as bizarre as the various folk tales and entities found within its 1 hour and 50-minute running time. (Jin PARK)