Écoute le temps

Écoute le temps - Directed by Alanté Kavaïté - seen here

Part of the project I am working on for The Last Gallery in Llangadog, Absent But Not Forgotten, has been to watch lots of films and TV within the horror/ghost story genre. We have especially been interested in the way that the aesthetics and methods of the media has informed its own development - art-imitating-life-imitating-art. One of the films I have found particularly beautiful is a French thriller called Écoute le temps - the English Language distribution title is Fissures.

Following the murder of her clairvoyant mother, a young sound recordist returns to her home in the French countryside. She begins to unravel the mystery of the killer through realising she can intercept the voices of the past with her sound equipment. She creates an extraordinary web of threads and markers as she attempts to plot the locations of the sound and discover the truth.

Here is a links list to some of the things we have been watching.


Mark Z. Danielewski - Cover of House of Leaves

This idea about the house as a container for its own histories has been an abiding theme for me in recent years, I was deeply effected by the book House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (2000). It is a hugely ambitious book which uses footnotes, type and design to reinforce the plots within. It is a kind of physical version of hyperlinked text. The use of a number of narrators creates a claustrophobic, neurotically tense story. This book was picked up in a similar way to The Blair Witch Project (1999) by Internet promotion and rumours of its alleged authenticity.