V 13, a film and talk by Richard C. Ledes
Premiere in Canada
by Corpo Freudiano Vancouver
Dates and Times
6 PM, March 29th – 2 PM, April 6th: The Screening Window (paid)
V13 will be available to watch from March 29th to April 6th. All those who purchase a ticket will receive a link to the film, and will also receive a Zoom link to attend the conversation (link also listed below). Please register for the conversation via Zoom before 10 AM on April 5th.
Buy the movie ticket here.
10 AM – 12PM, April 5th: The Conversation (free)
Richard C. Ledes, director of V13, will be in conversation with Corpo Freudiano Vancouver to talk about filming Lacan and psychoanalysis.
Register for the discussion via Zoom here.
The conversation is free of charge, a ticket purchased to watch the film is not necessary.
All times are GMT-7: Vancouver, BC, Canada time zone
Synopsis V13
Vienna, 1913, Europe is on the brink of WWI. Two young men become friends: Hugo, a musician from a privileged family, tries psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud, while Adolf, a struggling artist obsessed with vegetarianism, falls in love with German nationalism. This is Richard Ledes’ second fiction film based on the work of a Lacanian psychoanalyst and includes a portrayal of an analysis; this time conducted by Sigmund Freud as played by Alan Cumming.
The screenplay based on a play by the renowned French psychoanalyst and writer Alain Didier-Weill.
Director’s Statement
I wrote the screenplay for V13 based on a play by the renowned French psychoanalyst and writer Alain Didier-Weill. Researching and reflecting on the rise of extreme German nationalism in Vienna before WWI and how it gave rise to the ideology of Nazism after were lifelong pursuits of Didier-Weill. He was himself analyzed by Jacques Lacan, the controversial French psychoanalyst who was one of the most important intellectual figures of the 20th century.
The roots of his interest, no doubt, go back to the experiences of his own Jewish family during the occupation of France but also to his conviction that it was important for all of humanity to examine the roots of the Nazi ideology—just as Freud had felt psychoanalysis was important for all of humanity.
Filmed overtly in New York City, V13 raises unsettling questions about the relation between this moment in the past and the rise of ethnonationalism in the present.
Reviews
— Richard C. Ledes
“V13 is dense, intense and impactful. It is full of important questions regarding the history of psychoanalysis, political history of the 20th century and the political moment through which the world is now passing.”
— Betty Fuks, author of the book, Freud and the Invention of Jewishness
“A complex portrait of the impossible profession at a vertiginous moment in history, Richard Ledes’s film, V13, asks whether the talking cure can also cure society’s ills… Sigmund Freud (Alan Cumming) is confronted with a troubling new patient—a young man (Liam Aiken) tormented by his own hatred of Jews. Set against a background of rising fascism, we are given a startlingly modern vision of Freud, sensitive and wise beyond any patient’s wildest dreams. This ambitious and thoughtful film resonates with the concerns of today.”
— Leslie Camhi, cultural critic and historian of psychoanalysis
Richard Ledes Biography
New York City filmmaker, media artist and writer Richard C. Ledes, has directed as well
as written and produced a body of work that returns to a richly elaborated set of themes.
His 2008 film, The Caller, starring Frank Langella, Eliott Gould and Laura Haring, won
the Made In New York Prize at the Tribeca Film Festival and the BFI (British Film
Institute) selected his 2012 film, Fred Won’t Move Out, as one of ten essential films of
the actor Elliott Gould. His films often draw on experiences within his own family such
as mental illness and forced immigration (ethnic cleansing). For Ledes these have a
relation to stigma and racism that needs to be reimagined in order to be remembered
rather than assigned to oblivion. His visual style is further shaped by his experience-driven
research into theories of ideology as well as into theories of individual and collective forms
of madness. His films frequently have attracted the collaboration of some of the most
notable names in independent cinema, including Michelle Williams, Michael Imperioli,
Wendell Pierce, David Patrick Kelly, Frank Langella, Laura Harring, Elliott Gould and—in his
forthcoming film V13—Alan Cumming. Two of the most important theoretical touchstones
for his work are ancient Greek—he has a doctorate in Comparative Literature from NYU— and the work of Sigmund Freud and the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.
