A Beginners' Guide to Sally Potter: Thriller + shorts

Thriller has its roots in Sally Potter's performance-based early structuralist shorts, which use looped film, multiple screens and subversive humour to question the relation between performer and audience. Sophie Mayer explores these early works, screening some extracts from the Archive, which set the scene for later developments, while signposting the highlights of this month's retrospective. Arising from the zeitgeist of punk, protest and feminist theory, Thriller cuts up Puccini's La Boheme and Psycho's score to ask why the woman always has to die. With boys in tutus, the Medusa's laugh, and a black Mimi, in 30 minutes Potter throws the status quo out of the window.

PLUS: We invite you to join us in the BFI Filmstore prior to the event from 19:30 onwards to celebrate the recent publication of 'The Cinema of Sally Potter: A Politics of Love' (Wallflower, 2009). Author Sophie Mayer (and we hope Sally herself), will be on hand to sign copies.

Tickets £5. Presented with Club Des Femmes and Wallflower Press