The prologue to The Green Fog shows a dial being turned from “Talk” to “Listen”. In a studio cinema, a man in handcuffs is held at gunpoint as he watches the images on the screen. A map can be seen, with a finger pointing to San Francisco. Reporters stand in front of a building, poised to deliver news by loudspeaker; the public wait in fear. The Golden Gate Bridge appears, bathed in green light; a storm rises, the steep streets of the city are entirely deserted.
The structure of this film by Guy Maddin, Galen Johnson and Evan Johnson pays homage to Hitchcock’s Vertigo: a dizzying assemblage of film and TV images both familiar and unknown, all from the Bay Area. From this trove of found material, they have created a cinematic fantasy that pulls the viewer in and never lets go.
The short film Accidence is hardly less rich in images, though they are spread across the screen in just one single shot. A murder has been committed on a balcony. But it is only one of the many balconies attached to a large apartment block. Strange things are transpiring of each of them on loop. As the eye attempts to take them all in, the murder soon seems entirely unimportant.