Freud's Lost Lecture

Freud’s Lost Lecture is a six minute film Directed and created by Jane Thorburn in collaboration with the twice Man Booker shortlisted author Deborah Levy. The film was created in three acts for screening as separate parts on Instagram. The six minute version is intended for cinema and festival screenings.
Levy imagines a lost lecture written by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. It investigates an hysterical woman dancing through time, snow leopards lapping milk in the kitchen of Freud’s last house, and a journey under the ground on a ghost train.
The images, created by Thorburn, place the dancing woman in natural and man-made scenarios. Creatures are reconstructed from their basic elements in the way you might recognise them in dreams.
The juxtaposition of images and spoken word examines and interrogates the ways in which the relationship between the performative elements of female hysteria and associated body movements have been interpreted by Freudian Theory, making visual reference to the theatrical aspects of lectures.
Removing the human intention behind hysterical movement and replacing it with the frenetic repetitive dance of a mechanical ballerina works both to highlight and to question the performative and theatrical aspects of the lecture format and also the patients’ behaviour.

Awarded: Best Adaptation of Freudian Theory. Sigmund Freud Film Festival May 2019
Finalist: Oaxaca Film Festival Mexico 2019.
Exhibited with presentation: The Freud Museum, London 2019
Official Selection: The European Psychoanalytic Film Festival 2019