Whodunnit?

Looped DVD
34 min
2003/2004

Whodunnit? is a site-specific video projection installation for a theatre.
It borrows the form of a classic middlebrow English amateur dramatics drawing-room detective drama but features a multi-ethnic cast and loops back on itself in a vicious circle of suspicion, accusation, betrayal and fear.

Taking the ethnic minority categories on cultural diversity monitoring forms of arts funding applications as a guide, I cast an ethnic spectrum of British actors (Black African, Afro-Caribbean, South Asian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, East European, Latin American, Greek Cypriot, Jewish, Irish) to play the usual suspects interrogated by a hapless English Police Inspector.

As the predictably plodding and melodramatic mystery unfolds, each of the actors' accent starts to shift between a classic Received Pronunciation and a heavy foreign accent corresponding to the actor's cultural heritage.

The identity of the murderer is not the question; the real mystery is, what is the true identity of the individual? At a time when 'cultural diversity' has become a keyword in arts practice and 'multiculturalism' official and managerial, how does such 'ticking-the-boxes' categorisation limit the way we identify ourselves and others in terms of ethnicity, race or culture?

Whodunnit? was made with the support of a London Artists' Film & Video Award from Film London.

Whodunnit? was shown at the Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester in 2004
and at Toynbee Studios, London in 2005

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• whodunnit
• ming
• wong
• multi-ethnic
• multicultural

[kemushichan]

hahah my brain is melting~!

[burgesssc]

Ummm.... I'm sorry but what was the point in all this besides all the different ethnicities for this video?

[buuum98]

This is actually more of a self understanding video. It gets you thinking more about yousf

[themachinegunn]

i still dont unederstand what this want to say?????¿¿¿¿

[FrasseGunnar]

???

I still dont unederstand what this want to show???

[userblue]

What the -bloody- hell?

[PostingID]

Interesting. I thought each accent they exhibited would suit them...each and every one. Hmmm.....1/24/08

[HadmarWieser]

A funny and sophistic idea.

[Paul88732592]

mine too

[nadae2]

lawl