THE HOUSELESS SHADOW

by William RABAN
2011 / color / sound / 1 screen / 19' 07

The Charles Dickens essay Night Walks gives voice to the film, using the text to explore continuities between London’s nocturnal life as it is today, compared with how it was observed 150 years ago. Making the film was a process of retracing Dickens’s footsteps. Iconic landmarks evoke speculative thoughts about the penal system, liminal distinctions between sanity and madness and the hordes of London’s dead. There are striking differences from Dickens’s account of mid Victorian London, though some things remain remarkably consistent, such as when ‘the potmen thrust the last brawling drunkards onto the street’. What would Dickens’s keen eye for social inequality have made of the growing numbers of houseless on the streets of this otherwise glittering cosmopolitan city?

1 PRINT IN DISTRIBUTION


distribution format Digital file on server (FHD)
screen 16/9 (single screen)
speed 25 fps
sound sound
translation English (Embedded subtitles)
rental fee 85,00 €