sex, lies, and videotape (1989), dir. Steven Soderbergh.
Book tickets
A Palme d’Or winner and indie classic, sex, lies, and videotape (Steven Soderbergh, 1989) examines intimacy, deception and performance within contemporary relationships. The film centres on confession and voyeurism, revealing how desire is mediated through speech, surveillance and withholding.
Reworking the logic of the ‘bed trick’ for a modern context, sex, lies, and videotape replaces physical disguise with emotional concealment. Characters seek intimacy through misdirection and revelation, turning acts of confession into forms of erotic performance. In doing so, the film unsettles distinctions between truth and fabrication, consent and manipulation, exposing desire as something staged, deferred and negotiated.
This screening forms part of a wider film programme exploring the 'bed trick' – one of the oldest narrative devices in myth, literature and cinema – in which characters go to bed with one person and wake up with another. Across three films and a book launch, the programme examines how cinema uses disguise, secrecy and revelation to probe desire, fantasy and the entanglement of sex and lies.
Discover the programme
Curated by Izabella Scott, in collaboration with film curator Emily Wright.
Reworking the logic of the ‘bed trick’ for a modern context, sex, lies, and videotape replaces physical disguise with emotional concealment. Characters seek intimacy through misdirection and revelation, turning acts of confession into forms of erotic performance. In doing so, the film unsettles distinctions between truth and fabrication, consent and manipulation, exposing desire as something staged, deferred and negotiated.
This screening forms part of a wider film programme exploring the 'bed trick' – one of the oldest narrative devices in myth, literature and cinema – in which characters go to bed with one person and wake up with another. Across three films and a book launch, the programme examines how cinema uses disguise, secrecy and revelation to probe desire, fantasy and the entanglement of sex and lies.
Discover the programme
Curated by Izabella Scott, in collaboration with film curator Emily Wright.
Book tickets
08:15 pm
Sun, 29 Mar 2026
Cinema 2
Ticket information
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Cinema 2
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