Haunting
by John Menick, USA 2020, 32'
LANGUAGE: Vo: English, Japanese, Italian; Sub: Italian    

Schermo dell'Arte - Archivio Film  Presented at Lo schermo dell'arte 2020

Made by New York artist John Menick during lockdown, Haunting is a found footage horror film: clips from fifty international horror films from the last seventy years, projected on two side-by-side screens. The stars, mostly deceased or forgotten actors, interpret different stories with a common conventional theme: a mysterious house in which eerie things happen. The trouble begins with the inevitable shot of a staircase that leads to the mysteries on the upper or lower floors, and ends with a final escape into the night. These elements, in Menick’s film, make up an unusual choreography with an abstract, ghostly rhythm. Haunting is also a response to the pandemic, in which domestic space has been transformed, for many, into a disturbing place.

John Menick (USA 1976, lives and works in New York). Writer and visual artist, his works have been exhibited in group exhibitions and film festivals: dOCUMENTA 13, IFFR International Film Festival of Rotterdam, and at museums and institutions such as MOMA PS1, Palais de Tokyo, CCA Wattis of San Francisco and Artist Space of New York. His first book A Report on the City (Walter König press 2012) was named by Frieze magazine as one of the highlights of 2012.

Selected Filmography:
Starring Sigmund Freud, 2012; Paris Syndrome, 2010.

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