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Not a film but a symbolist collage redoxxing of Soviet masterpiece MIRROR [1975; directed by Andrei Tarkovsky].

Co-directed by me [Oli] and Danika Stegeman [poetess, master of the Russian accent] with spiritual assistance from Ami J. Sanghvi and the ghost of Jane Arden.

I say ‘not a film’ but it pretty much is one. One hour and forty-eight minutes, the same length as MIRROR itself, I think. And it just flies by [for you, not me cos I’ve watched it about a hundred thousand times in editing already].

Methodology: Using the original MIRROR as a foundation thread throughout, Danika and I basically reinterpreted, replaced, re-poeticized, re-symbolized, reterritorialized, renovated, messed up, muddied, mutated, subtitled…every possible thing we could think of…to make this old Russian thing a hundred times worse and/or different.

The main thesis: Memory is Horror.

You should feel this right from the start, with the hypnosis scene. I’m literally muttering ‘Memory is Horror’ in Russian. After that, it’s beauty and disruption via poetry and inserts from other films, and hopefully a sense of aesthetic dread.

Secondary thesis: The chaos of the sheets of the past.

While doing this, I took Cinema II out from the library again, so there’s a nasty strain of noosigns and chronosigns and sheets of the past running throughout. I think, instinctively, Danika channelled it into her scenes too. How can you not?

There was one constraint that we [mostly] followed: all visuals and clips [but not music] had to come from Soviet-era TV and film. This made everything ten times harder, but ultimately more Russian, which is what we wanted. The sources are too extensive to list out here; if you really wanna know, check out the end credits of the redox.

Voiceover dialogue scenes…are not actually that bad, considering neither Danika nor myself are actors. Great line reads of Ignat from Lentil Bebop too.

My favourite sections: The printing press scene which runs to around 15 minutes, and another long one, the visit to the neighbour’s house, which Danika and I turned into something a lot more occultish and creepy.

I’m putting the first seven minutes or so up here, and will maybe put up some more scenes later, all to try to get you over to the Psycho Holosuite YouTube channel where you can see THE WHOLE ONE HOUR AND FORTY-EIGHT-MINUTE redox.

If you like MIRROR, video collage, surrealism, symbolism [soft or strict], Tarkovsky, etc. make a coffee, sit down and let it wash over you.