"The Red Shoes, the singular fantasia from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, is cinema's quintessential backstage drama, as well as one of the most glorious Technicolor feasts ever concocted for the screen. Moira Shearer is a rising star ballerina torn between an idealistic composer and a ruthless impresario intent on perfection. Featuring outstanding performances, blazingly beautiful cinematography by Jack Cardiff, Oscar-winning sets and music, and an unforgettable, hallucinatory central dance sequence, this beloved classic, now dazzlingly restored, stands as an enthralling tribute to the life of the artist."
-The Criterion Collection

A discussion with New Yorker dance critic Joan Acocella and psychoanalyst Leon Balter will follow the screening.

This screening is made possible by permission from Swank Motion Pictures. It is the first in a series on psychoanalysis and cinema produced in cooperation with the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute in honor of its centenary anniversary.

Joan Acocella is a staff writer for The New Yorker, where she writes primarily about books and dance. Her own books include Mark Morris (a critical biography of the choreographer), Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder, and Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism. She also edited the first unexpurgated English-language edition of The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky. Her most recent book, a collection of essays entitled Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints, was published in paperback in 2008.

Leon Balter is Supervising and Training Analyst at the The New York Psychoanalytic Institute. He is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.