The Afterlight is a collage of fragments with a single 35mm print – but it has more in common with digital media than the illusion of instant access suggests
For as long as there have been films, there have been lost films. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of them – and not just unloved obscurities but key works by Hitchcock, Ozu and Warhol, all left to decay in their canisters, burned up in archive fires, or simply misplaced and never recovered. One day my new film, The Afterlight, will be among them.
Assembled from fragments of hundreds of old films from around the world, The Afterlight is a found-footage collage that brings together a vast ensemble cast of actors with one thing in common: everyone who appears on screen is no longer alive. In the film, they live on through the performances they left behind, as though preserved in the amber of cultural memory.
The Afterlight will screen at London film festival on 15 and 17 October, before screenings at the Cambridge, Leeds and Cinecity Brighton film festivals next month. Screening times at theafterlight.xyz