Remake

Remake is a re-shooting of Atom Age Vampire, which is a re-edited and dubbed version of a low budget Italian horror film called Seddok, l'erede di Satana. Such editing and dubbing was not uncommon in this time. Seddock was itself is an unacknowledged remake of the celebrated Les yeux sans visage, by Georges Franju, made in 1960.

In my film, the shots from Seddock have been recreated to preserve the framing, focus and moves of the camera - but minus the cast.

The texture and image quality of the film is intended to evoke the poor quality of such genre films that once circulated on poor 16mm prints, or later on VHS tapes of deplorable quality. Many such films can now be seen on YouTube  - where picture and sound quality are irrelevant to those happy simply to be able to watch them at all, since their survival is a kind of miracle.

Seddock and Atom Age Vampire also exist in a state of legal limbo - the rights unclaimed and untraceable - a predicament of a surprisingly large number of films, that are generally known as 'orphan films'. In this case, I have tried vainly to find any living person or legal entity to talk to about my using the dubbed soundtrack in the way I have.

Remaking is a familiar process, harking back to the making of copies of paintings made in a previous era, where the merits of the original are not the point: the point was simply that there was a perceived value and that mimicry or an original was enough. Art History attempts to sift out counterfeits and copies, obsessing with the notion of an 'original'. There is no such thing as an original film of course, since film exists only when it is projected in front of an audience. It is never an object with provenance because it is not an object, whatever intellectual property lawyers may assert.

This film is an experiment, removing the human presence from the film frame but preserving the effect of human presence. It is perhaps a response to Gorky's comment that film is a kingdom of shadows: he was talking about seeing film images of people as ghosts, preserved eternally on a film of emulsion. I thought to remove these ghosts and see what remains.

director/camera/editing: Adam Roberts

Published by filmarmalade artists film and video

Available from the BFI Filmstore, and on line.