The Media and the Other Ghosts

Colour, DIGIBETA
United Kingdom, 2010, 60 min
Section: 2010: A Musical Odyssey

Synopsis

Music shaped by memories, hazy, indistinct visions on the borders of sleep and wakefulness: this is one of the strong trends driving today’s independent music scene. Memory games, the media reality of the 1960s–1980s and "ghosts of the past” are plotted out in a series of experimental films put together especially for the Karlovy Vary IFF. The stylishly refined films of Julian House represent a showcase of "hauntological music” from the British label Ghost Box Music. Hauntology (an idea introduced by philosopher Jacques Derrida) is an expression for a past which is still with us and affects us now, haunting the present like a ghost. The sources of inspiration are varied: testimonies of inexplicable phenomena; amateur photography suffering the Blow Up syndrome – namely, taking innocent snapshots of something crucial; "strange” episodes from feature films whose subject matter and style continue to elude us.... This is the world of analogue forms, old book covers, television shows and textbooks on which today’s generation of world rulers were reared, but they failed to notice the "ghosts” within.

About the director

Julian House is a renowned graphic artist associated with Intro, a London-based design and production studio. He is known for his music videos and album covers, most notably for the bands Primal Scream, The Prodigy, Oasis, Stereolab and Broadcast. He is also a musician (The Focus Group projects) and film director and writer. Together with Jim Jupp, he founded and heads the Ghost Box Music label, for which he also made the films presented at KVIFF (Phenomena and Occurences, Winter Sun Wavelength). His audiovisual projects reflect a highly distinctive approach, both in design and sound, which House demonstrates via his collaboration on the album Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age, voted by The Wire music magazine as the Best Album of 2009.