Fictional Recall - Episode 4

FICTIONAL RECALL


This is a collaborative project based on resurrecting forgotten memories.


I purchased a plastic bag full of Super 8 reels for 10€ at the flea market. When screening them at home i discovered that what i had in my hands was nothing but somebody's family memories. After the first shock, i began to feel really disgusted by the fact of this memories being sold, rejected or, at least, forgotten. I projected all the footage and cut it in one minute length clips which didn't follow any intention or idea and that i offered to writers to give them a second life. The idea was to invent a fictional context for those memories with unknown origin, to write a story in first person that made them their own. So those orphan keepsakes could recover the lost value. And in a certain way, the idea was also to emulate the way our own memory works.


"My gran used to keep this list of her top ten favourite deaths. I think she envied the people who'd died in her favourite ways. There was Auntie Lynda who walked into town one day and bought an opal ring as big as a pigeon's egg. She just went to the jeweller's and wrote out a check for a few thousand pounds. She must have taken it right out of the box and put it on so she could walk home wearing it. She dropped dead the moment she reached her garden gate. My dad said they'd had to amputate a finger to get the ring off. But you can't always trust your father.

Auntie Lynda was Number One on the death charts for a long time, but later she was overtaken by Mr William "Bogsy" Carstairs. Mr Carstairs was watching Laurel and Hardy while his wife was in the kitchen. The cake timer buzzed and she opened the oven, filling thehouse with the heavenly fragrance of fresh baking. She could hear him laughing in the parlour. It was the one where they glue a paintbrush to somebody's chin. When she came in with the hot scones, she found him dead in his chair. She said he must have died laughing.

I always quibbled Mr Carstair's right to the top position. I said it would be vexing to die before you'd had your scones. I said I wouldn't want to die until I was holding the very last hot buttery bite in my mouth - just before swallowing. But gran said it was a million times better to die laughing than todie drooling semi-masticated crumbs over your chin. There was no arguing with that.

My gran died one Sunday afternoon, near the end of a Miss Marple film. She died a few minutes after calling herself an ambulance. The last thing she ate was a slice of date-and-walnut tealoaf, and she definitely finished it. There was no drooling. I like to think she made it into her own top five."

Shotdate | -location:
2008 Dec. | Valencia (ES)

Related tags:
super 8, memory, found, remember, super 8mm, recall, fictional, footage, found footage, zora, strangefields, collaborative

Tip:
Found footage digitilized and animated credits.

EPISODE 4:
Memory: Zora Strangefields
Projectionist: Urizen

Subtitled version here: »link
 

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