Join us for a selection of films relating to the exhibition. The programme will include features as well as shorts from the Wellcome Library’s collection.

This event contains surgical film sequences that some may find disturbing. It is intended for those aged 14 years and over and is not recommended for those prone to fainting.

The brain is an iconic image in cinema, and one that has shaped our cultural understanding of both mind and matter since the first visualisation of the abnormal brain of Frankenstein’s monster in 1931. Two unique examples of the celluloid brain – a harrowing documentary and a classic horror B-movie – together explore ethics, autopsy, ectobrains and the dawn of science fiction. A special shorts programme of footage from Wellcome Images will also be screened throughout the day.

Gray Matter (2004) Running time: 52 minutes
15.00–16.30

This documentary follows film-maker Joe Berlinger as he travels to Vienna to witness the ‘funeral of the brains’, a moving event marking the burial of over 700 brains extracted from children in horrific eugenics experiments under the Nazi regime.

Followed by Fernando Vidal in conversation with Marius Kwint as they explore the ethics and perversity of the brain as a medical specimen and the traces retained by the organ.

Donovan’s Brain (1953) Running time: 85 minutes
17.30–19.30

In this classic B-movie, surgeon Patrick Cory fails to save the life of millionaire Warren H Donovan, but – with the help of his wife and collaborator – extracts his brain and keeps it flourishing in a life-sustaining solution. What happens next is the stuff of nightmares!

Followed by Fernando Vidal in conversation with Mark Pilkington, discussing the cult of science fiction and the horror of ectobrains.

Speakers:

Marius Kwint, guest curator of ‘Brains: The mind as matter’ and senior lecturer in Visual Culture at the University of Portsmouth

Mark Pilkington, author of ‘Far Out: 101 strange tales from science's outer edge’

Facilitator

Fernando Vidal, senior research scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

This event is FREE.

Free tickets for the films ‘Gray Matter’ and ‘Donovan's Brain’ can be reserved from 12.00 in Wellcome Collection. Tickets are limited to two per person. No ticket is required to view the shorts programme; you can drop in at any time. The exhibition ‘Brains: The mind as matter’ and the permanent galleries, café and bookshop will also be open all day.

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