The Cinematheque

“Sheer terror and sheer poetry … Häxan is the filmic equivalent of a hellish engraving by Bruegel or a painting by Bosch.”

Guillermo del Toro

Häxan
Sweden/​Denmark 1922
Benjamin Christensen
105 min. DCP Swedish intertitles with English subtitles

One of the earliest depictions of witches in the history of cinema, Benjamin Christensen’s silent era masterpiece was in fact an attempt to demystify superstitions by rooting them in mental illness. Divided into seven acts, Häxan stages an exaggerated retelling of the practice of witchcraft through the ages, piecing together original writings, paintings, illustrations, and witness accounts to bring to life the essence of the witch myth, while at the same time serving as a deeply disturbing record of centuries of female oppression. Playing in the realm of hybrid, surrealist filmmaking, Christensen, himself in the role of Satan, combines stop-motion animation and live-action dramatizations, bolstered by impressive set designs and practical effects. In the process, Häxan conjures something that is at once mystifying, ludicrous, terrifying, and endlessly entertaining. Cinema alchemy at its finest.

Restored DCP courtesy Swedish Film Institute

“The silent forerunner to modish found-footage chillers such as The Blair Witch Project … A cult classic.” Pamela Hutchinson, BFI

“A witches’ brew of the scary, the gross, and the darkly humorous … An experience unlike anything else in the history of cinema.” The Criterion Collection

preceded by

Witch’s Cradle
USA 1943
Maya Deren
13 min. DCP Silent

Filmed at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery and posthumously pieced together, Maya Deren’s witchy collaboration with Dada master Marcel Duchamp yields a hallucinatory concoction that sees a young woman caught up in an occult reverie.

“The vision is crystal-clear, the sense of ritual, dance, and painterly visual composition. It’s remarkable.” Austin Film Society

“Witch’s Cradle is the clearest exposition of Deren’s ideas about magic and the occult.” Judith Noble, Frames Cinema Journal