The Philoctetes Center is honored to present Writer of O as the fourth in its Film Series. Published in Paris in 1954, Story of O was an immediate bestseller and literary scandal: an elegantly written S&M fantasy that had all the hallmarks of being an autobiographical account by the pseudonymous Pauline Reage. In 1994, Dominique Aury, a mild-mannered editor at the prestigious Gallimard publisher revealed her authorship. In this documentary, to which Dominique Aury gave her blessing, Pola Rapaport explores Aury's inspiration, recreating the world of 50s literary Paris and setting it against dramatic sequences that bring the book to life. In the film, Dominique Aury and other French intellectuals speak to the complicated relationship between sexuality and power, submission and freedom, liberation and self-abnegation. Dominique Aury died in 1998 at the age of 90, well before the completion of the film. The Philoctetes Center is delighted that Pola Rapaport, the film's director, will be present at the screening and will participate in the discussion.

"With remarkable intelligence, Pola Rapaport ... has chosen to tell the real story that Story of O holds hidden between the lines. To do so, she put Dominique Aury at the center of her film.... Using documentary footage, some of it not previously seen, the film shows her at various periods of her life. As a very old woman, Dominique Aury speaks, with great tenderness, about just how far and in what directions love can take one." - Le Monde, December 13, 2004

Discussants:
Toni Bentley is a former dancer with New York City Ballet. She is the author of The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir, Winter Season: A Dancer's Journal, and Sisters of Salome, and of numerous articles and reviews.

Roger Copeland is Professor of Theater and Dance at Oberlin College. His essays about theater, dance, and film have appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, The New Republic, Film Comment, and Partisan Review. He is the author of What Is Dance? and Merce Cunningham: The Modernizing of Modern Dance.

Daphne Merkin is a critic and novelist and has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker, The New Republic, and The New York Times Book Review. She is the author of Enchantment and Dreaming of Hitler.

Lois Oppenheim is Distinguished Scholar, Professor of French, and Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Montclair State University, where she also teaches courses in psychoanalysis and the literary and visual arts. She has authored or edited ten books and published over seventy articles. Her most recent books include A Curious Intimacy: Art and Neuro-Psychoanalysis and The Painted Word: Samuel Beckett's Dialogue With Art. Dr. Oppenheim is a member of the advisory board of The Philoctetes Center.

Pola Rapaport is the writer and director of Writer of O, Family Secret (2000) and Blind Light (1997).

This screening is presented in collaboration with Film Forum, New York's leading nonprofit cinema for independent and repertory cinema. Writer of O is presented courtesy of its distributor, Zeitgeist Films.