This course looks at theme of evil in the cinema. Why is it that conceptions of evil and its nature and source, distinctions between natural and moral evil, and what belongs to God versus to the human race have formed so much of the subject matter, and undergone so many transformations, in film? What can films teach us about evil? And what about the proposition that some films may themselves be evil? Through a number of theoretical readings that draw on a psychoanalytical understanding of evil — including texts by Immanuel Kant on ‘radical evil’, Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of Auschwitz, Alain Badiou on the self-evidence and necessity of evil, Alenka Zupancic on rethinking the concept of evil, Terry Eagleton on the rarity of pure evil, Jacques Lacan on how the pure ethical attitude is inextricably linked to the pleasure of violence, Slavoj Žižek on ‘loving thy neighbour’ and violence, George Bush and ‘the axis of evil’ and current reflections on looming climatic and nuclear disasters — we will address the working structures of the evil event in the cinema. Films to be studied range from Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936) where an innocent man is lynched by a righteous mob; Ingmar Bergman’s Prison (1949) which proposes that life on earth is governed by the Devil; Rolf de Heer’s Bad Boy Bubby (1994) about a 35-year-old psychopath who has never set foot outside his mother’s apartment; Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1959) which provoked such fury in the press that it all but destroyed the career of its director; Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò (1975) often cited as the most disturbing film ever made; Lars von Trier’s shocking Antichrist (2009) accused of rampant misogyny, of being “an abomination”, “the sickest film in the history of cinema”; and Gus van Sant’s exploration of high school shootings Elephant (2003).