Corridor
At the end of 1996 in an old shop in Vienna specialising in film materials I found a tin with indeterminable pieces of 16mm film showing much wear and tear. They dated from the late 60s. After a cursory glance I thought "yes". The found footage material was ideal for the horror series. I prepared the film for compilation using mirror projection and filmed myself in detailed structures through the light axis. For the introductory sequence I chose the top of a poplar tree and a neo-gothic house. The lighting of the body scenes as filmed is very harsh, whereas I shot the poplar top and the neo-gothic house both over and under-exposed. Then I mixed associative tones throughout the corridor. The first version cut showed the bodies in a state which was too excited and then I began to structure the film with black frame sequences of varying lengths. The man who is lying in bed with the woman who appears dead was perfect for the start of the body scenes. I concentrated the lens on a very narrow view and allowed the horde of found-footage actors to react with each others. I wanted to construct a insidious / traumatic phenomenon in which the head and body glide through the picture again and again and are extinguished in the black frames. At the end a man whips a man and an actress is tied up. The top of the poplar tree appears under-to-over exposed while a hand glides through the picture twice. Corridor is the 5th film in the horror series "Black Garden" along with The Murder Mystery (1987/92), Blicklust (1992), Party (1995), Macumba (1995/96). Work in progress: Organics. (Dietmar Brehm)