Book tickets
Join us for the launch of Izabella Scott’s The Bed Trick: Sex and Deception on Trial (2026). Scott’s book examines sexual deception in law and literature, focusing on a recent British trial in which a student was convicted of 'rape by deception'.
In conversation with film scholar Lucy Bolton, Scott will explore the cultural history of the ‘bed trick’ – from myth and Shakespeare to modern debates around sex, desire, and performance – and its implications today.
A companion film programme explores how cinema restages the ‘bed trick’ as a site of desire, fantasy and revelation. Three pivotal films – Sylvia Scarlett (George Cukor, 1935), M. Butterfly (David Cronenberg, 1993) and sex, lies, and videotape (Steven Soderbergh, 1989) – unsettle the boundary between truth and performance, lover and impostor, consent and illusion.
Discover the programme
Curated by Izabella Scott, in collaboration with film curator Emily Wright.
In conversation with film scholar Lucy Bolton, Scott will explore the cultural history of the ‘bed trick’ – from myth and Shakespeare to modern debates around sex, desire, and performance – and its implications today.
A companion film programme explores how cinema restages the ‘bed trick’ as a site of desire, fantasy and revelation. Three pivotal films – Sylvia Scarlett (George Cukor, 1935), M. Butterfly (David Cronenberg, 1993) and sex, lies, and videotape (Steven Soderbergh, 1989) – unsettle the boundary between truth and performance, lover and impostor, consent and illusion.
Discover the programme
Curated by Izabella Scott, in collaboration with film curator Emily Wright.
Bios
Izabella Scott is a writer and researcher from London. She is author of The Bed Trick: Sex and Deception on Trial (2026), which follows a recent criminal trial; and co-author of Pleasure Gardens: Blackouts and the Logic of Crisis in Kashmir (2024) with Skye Arundhati Thomas, which was joint winner of the 2025 Bread & Roses Award for Radical Publishing. She was formerly co-editor of The White Review.
Lucy Bolton is Professor of Film Philosophy at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of Contemporary Cinema and the Philosophy of Iris Murdoch, and Film and Female Consciousness: Irigaray, Cinema and Thinking Women. She has recently edited The Feminist Film Philosophy Reader, due out June 2026.
Book tickets
07:00 pm
Wed, 18 Mar 2026
Cinema 1
Ticket information
- All tickets that do not require ID (full price, disabled, income support) can be printed at home or stored in email
- For aged-based concession tickets (under 25, student) please bring relevant ID to collect at the front desk before the event.
Access information
Cinema 1
- Both our Cinemas have step free access from The Mall and are accessible by ramp
- We have 1 wheelchair allocated space with a seat for a companion
- All seats are hard back, have a crushed velvet feel and they do not recline
- These are our seat size dimensions: W 42 x D 45 x H 52
- Arm rest either side of the seat dimensions: L 27 x W 7 x H 20
for the following requirements:
- We have unassigned seating. If you require a specific seat, please reserve this in advance
- Free for visitors where ticket prices are a barrier, please email
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Izabella Scott By Christa Holka.
Lucy Bolton.
no. 236848.