Lost Islands — Sample Reel

In Lost Islands, I use footage appropriated from classic cinema to examine how, in the age of computer graphic imaging, traditional cinematic suspense-building methods today evoke nostalgia and pleasure, rather than suspense and horror. By dismantling lost island-style classic thrillers and horror films—like King Kong, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and so forth—I seek to produce for my purposes some basic, cinematic "building blocks of the uncanny." These building blocks I then reassemble to create a shadowy realm in which tropes of suspense and expectation take on new, often pleasurable meanings.

My video installation consists of two (or potentially more) channels of looped footage, which play on old T.V. sets opposite one another in a small, dark room. As the loops play, each is accompanied by a quiet soundtrack of organ music similarly appropriated from horror cinema—Nosferatu, The Haunted Castle, etc.—and deployed in new layers and combinations, creating an unearthly yet understated zone of gentle cacophany.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• lost
• islands
• edwin
• janzen