The Mythic Power of Film with Geoffrey Hill

Program Description

After listening to this exploration of the mythological significance of films, you will never watch movies with the same eyes again. Psychotherapist Geoffrey Hill describes cinema as an art form revealing the fears and desires, symbols and issues of contemporary times. Ranging over a host of examples from The Graduate to Babette’s Feast, from Gone With the Wind to Unforgiven, we catch glimpses of Robin Hood as trickster god, Beauty and the Beast as Psyche and Cupid, and movie villains as images of the “psychological vampires and cannibals in society.” Even the experience of walking into a movie theater takes on religious significance. “Films are nothing more than the collective dreams of the collective soul,” Hill maintains, “and if we learn the language of the symbols within films, then we can gain some wisdom for society at large.”

He is the author of Illuminating Shadows: The Mythic Power of Film (Shambhala 1992).

Program Number: 2378                   Host: Michael Toms                  Interview Date: 3/29/1993