Monster Dialectics

| The Walls Have Goose Bumps
(BALi, KulturBahnhof Kassel)

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An experimental film, combining archive and original footage. It examines how the personal trauma that architect Frank Lloyd Wright dealt with in his buildings in Los Angeles in the 1920s resurfaces in many Hollywood films and series, in which his architecture is used as a backdrop and dramaturgical device. The film explores the relationship between Wright's Mayan Revival buildings and their staging as haunted houses, Yakuza mafia mansions, or AI labs. It hypothesizes that the buildings embody Wrights emotional wounds and function as a valve for his suppressed feelings after the brutal murder of his beloved “Mamah” and their children. The key figure – the monster – is the ghost and the voice of the house. He appears both as a character in architectural settings and in the film's off-camera commentary. In the end, the film aims to emphasize in how these peculiar houses function as mediator of intense emotions.

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  • Duration: 12 Min.
  • Countries: Sweden, United States
  • Languages: English
  • Subtitles: No subtitles
  • Production year: 2021
  • Premiere: World Premiere

  • Director: Emanuel Röhss
  • Camera: Meredith Leckey
  • Sound: Dusk Bennett
  • Production: Matt Doyle