14/02/2020 Taigh Chearsabhagh, North Uist
16/02/2020 Eden Court, Inverness
16/02/2020 Doc House, London (plus Q&A)
16/02/2020 The Loft Cinema, Hereford
16/02/2020 Boness Hippodrome, Falkirk
16/02/2020 GFT, Glasgow
16/02/2020 DCA, Dundee
16/02/2020 Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast
17/02/2020 MacRobert, Stirling
07/03/2020 Filmhouse, Edinburgh (plus Q&A)
27/02/2020 Cambridge Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge (plus Q&A)
30/03/2020 Grassmarket, Edinburgh (plus Q&A)
What is Eminent Monsters about?
In the 1950’s the CIA and Canada covertly funded Scottish born psychiatrist Dr. Ewen Cameron to embark on the darkest program of psychological experimentation in modern history. Subjecting his “patients” to sensory deprivation, forced comas, LSD injections and extreme physical and mental torture, Cameron’s techniques have since been used in 27 countries around the world.
With testimony from senior American psychologists, military personnel and key whistle blowers, director Stephen Bennett shines fresh light upon claims of collusion between doctors and the state and lays bare the legacy of pain left behind by Cameron.
From the establishment of a human torture laboratory in Montreal and the humiliation and terror of Guantanamo, to the “Hooded Men” of Belfast seeking justice and reparation at the European Court of Human Rights, EMINENT MONSTERS is an urgent call to the international community to right the wrongs of the past and protect us from a dangerous future.
In the summer of 2019 the film was taken to the UN in Geneva where an internationally esteemed panel of experts discussed how the film contributes to the wider discussion around “The Faultlines Between Psychological Torture and Coercive Interrogation”.
The event catapulted the film to the forefront of the debate around the moral responsibilities of the international community to such an extent that the UN Special Rapporteur for Torture, Prof Nils Melzer, has cited the film as a motivational factor in writing a report on psychological torture that he will submit to the UN Human Rights Council in 2020 to coincide with the film’s cinema release and UK TV broadcast.
Eminent Monsters: A Manual For Modern Torture is proudly supported by Reprieve and Screen Scotland.
Eminent Monsters is produced by Hopscotch Films with funding from BBC Scotland and Screen Scotland / Creative Scotland. The film is being distributed by Cosmic Cat in partnership with Reprieve and Think Film Impact Production, a leading impact consultancy for the film industry.