The Gap in the Curtain
The esoteric and extraordinary begin to leak into the domestic sphere in this selection of three haunting shorts. Join us on a ritualistic journey from the desolate moors of 1970s Northumberland to a derelict house in post-Industrial Detroit, and onwards to the myths and masks contained within the Carboniferous fossil collection at the Birmingham’s Lapworth Museum of Geology.
Artist-filmmaker Susanne Deeken deconstructs an abandoned house, which serves as a canvas for a phantasmagorical stop-motion painting over the walls, floors, ceilings, furniture and stairs. Belgian artists Chloë Delanghe and Mattijs Driesen document a series of paranormal events that took place in Hexham, Northumberland in the early '70s upon the unearthing of two mysterious stone heads.
Filmmaker Benjamin Wigley delves into the museum’s collections to create hand-crafted photographic prints, etchings, drawings, sculptures and costumes that feed into a single channel, hand-processed 16mm film, a further material layer that infuses myth, mask, and folkloric traditions.
The filmmakers will be in conversation after the screening, accompanied a live performance from musician Nathaniel Mann.
Philip Ilson