Video artist Johan Grimonprez has made a stimulating, highly entertaining mash-up of Hitchcock TV intros, 60s newsreel footage and instant coffee ads tracing the Cold War origins of catastrophe culture.
Television brought murder into the American home, where it has always belonged.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2009
Double Take 2008
Belgian video artist Johan Grimonprez offers a smart-as-hell mash-up of Hitchcock TV intros and movie moments, doppelgänger plotting from Borges, 60s newsreel footage and instant coffee ads (calculated to instil the fear of catastrophe in any decent American woman). Mediaphiles and 60s-watchers can expect to be highly entertained and left with an unshakeable impression that film and television were the primary battlefield of the Cold War, with the Master of Suspense its presiding jester and genius. — BG
“Double Take starts off with Hitchcock saying, ‘I think my mother scared me when I was three months old.’ ...But then he says, ‘You see, she said “Boo!”’ and turns it into a joke. It's like the whole cold war - the entire world was like, ‘Oh, they are scaring us,’ but in the end all either side actually did was say ‘Boo!’ in order to boost their defense industries, and people started to wonder, was this all a big joke?” — Johan Grimonprez, Artforum