The Fourth Watch
Animation
•
9m 46s
Directed by Janie Geiser • Documentary • 2000 • 9 minutes
The Fourth Watch was one of Film Comment’s Top Ten Avant-Garde Films of the Decade (2000-2010)
The ancient Greeks divided the night into four sections; the last watch before morning was called the fourth watch. In the hours before dawn, an endless succession of rooms is inhabited by silent film figures occupying the flickering space in a midcentury house made of printed tin. Their presence is at once inevitable and uncanny. A nocturnal drama of lost souls. 16mm film. Music by Tom Recchion.
“A small masterpiece of the uncanny.” —Mark McElhatten, Views from the Avant-Garde (NYFF 2000)
“A poetic metaphor for the current state of avant-garde cinema, when the medium’s past, future, and even its own death are being transformed into material for provocative new films." —Kristin M. Jones, Film Comment
“Silent-movie actors filmed off a video monitor are superimposed on the interior of a dollhouse, their flickering images so expertly fused with the miniature rooms’ bright, solid colors that they create a fragile lost world evoking both theater and the movies.” —Fred Camper, Chicago Reader
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