WARM BODIES

SCIENCE. ART. FILM.

Wednesday, 22 February 2023 at 6:00 PM
Arc Cinema
Allocated Seating, please register in advance
 

About

Warm Bodies is a 2013 zombie romantic comedy film directed by Jonathan Levine and based on the 2010 novel by Isaac Marion. The film loosely traces the story of William Shakespeare's 16th century tragedy, Romeo and Juliet - with a twist.

Romeo is 'R' (Nicholas Hoult), a (quite literally) heartless zombie. On meeting Julie (Teresa Palmer) – a living human – R's heart begins to change. The film explores adaptation and genre-mashing while also offering a unique representation of a potent symbol in western culture: the heart.  
 
Throughout the centuries, literary, cultural and medical discourse has reinforced the heart as a critical organ, a sign of life, a symbol of identity, humanity, and a means of representing the self. The heart is central to human ontology; a vital organ and a pervasive metaphor.  
 
Through its mashup of zombified classic romantic tragedy, Warm Bodies examines the dual meanings of the heart as a sign of life and as an emotional centre - as we will explore in conversation with heart experts!
 
Speakers 

Dr Claire Hansen is a Lecturer in English at the Australian National University. She is co-founder of the Heart of the Matter health humanities research project which explores interdisciplinary representations of the heart. She also works on place-based approaches to Shakespeare. Her forthcoming book  is Shakespeare and Place-Based Learning (Cambridge University Press).  
 
Dr Katharina Bonzel is a Lecturer at the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences interested in national-transnational cinema, genre films (in particular sport and action films), documentary, and gender in film and television.

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