Häxan at Bielefeld

Film+Musikfest: Halloween Special: Häxan (Witches)

Duration 107 minutes

Production Sweden 1922

Starring: Maren Pedersen, Clara Pontoppian, Elith Pio and others

Witches' Sabbath, torture chamber, rack, pillory, pyre: As a Halloween special, a semi-documentary horror classic about the persecution of witches. Due to its explicit depictions of violence and nudity, Benjamin Christensen's film Häxan sparked international protests after its premiere in Sweden, as a result of which the film was censored and mutilated. It was only when it was re-released in cinemas by its director in 1941 that the original version was also shown abroad.

Benjamin Christensen deals with the treatment of witches over time and, in particular, with witch hunts, necromancy and visions of saints. He shows how witches brew mysterious concoctions or bewitch people, how they are put on trial and ultimately tortured and killed. With its special effects, animation techniques and an expressionist aesthetic that still gives gothic-loving contemporaries the creeps today, the film is an almost unjustly forgotten masterpiece. Incidentally, the director and screenwriter Christensen gave himself the role of the devil

But beyond all the calculations of spectacle and taboo-breaking, Häxan is an educational film and at the same time a furiously indignant indictment of misogyny in society right up to the present day.

The Selke brothers ‘explore textures of creaking strings, beaten wood, with the intensity of a horror film.’ John Lewis, The Guardian,

Director and screenplay: Benjamin Christensen, music: Brueder Selke