A collaborative dramatic reworking of a 'psychedelically enhanced' excerpt from the award-winning film ‘San Francisco’. The carefree spirit of the original 1968 film is placed in a sobering and revelatory context through the juxtaposition of the original footage with audio drawn from the seminal events of that momentous year.

Part of a multi-channel installation, it is presented here as a short film.

During discussions of potential new versions of the film, Sadia proposed to Anthony and Stephen that the content of the film ‘San Francisco’ could be reinterpreted as an installation work, of which this is a single channel version. She says 'Forty years after the original footage was shot, the content takes on an altered significance. I suggested that we might use audio of the seminal events of that year in place of the original soundtrack. In the light of history, this produces a sense of “fiddling while Rome burns”.

'We decided to sequence it to a somewhat orgiastic clip of footage Anthony originally shot in 1968, which is now running 25x slower than it was originally. Stephen added to the psychedelic nature of the imagery by solarising the footage, and provided a sonic landscape in which to set the historic audio clips gathered by me. Anthony gave birth to the idea of slowing down his original single-frame imagery, and between the three of us I think we’ve deconstructed the original message of the film to provide new layers of meaning and subtext.'

directed and edited by Sadia Sadia, Stephen W Tayler & Anthony Stern

produced by Anthony Stern (1968) and Sadia Sadia (2008)

soundscape by Sadia Sadia and Stephen W Tayler

original music by Stephen W Tayler

filmed by Anthony Stern

IMDb entry

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