Output details

Film Installation "Unfolding the Aryan Papers" 2009, duration 17.40 mins. 16mm film, single screen projection, including gauze box and two mirrors .

Brief Description

"Unfolding the Aryan Papers" 2009 emanated out of the research Jane and Louise Wilson undertook at the archives of Stanley Kubrick. Reflecting on the specific circumstance, the fact that he cancelled his film "Aryan Papers", which was based on Louis Begley's book "War Time Lies", a true story of how and Aunt and her nephew survived the Warsaw Ghetto. Historical memory and narrative speculation blend with each other, on a plane that only art can conscientiously problematise. The work has just been on show in LACMA, LA as part of the "Stanley Kubrick" ,Retrospective, 2013.

Research Rational

It was important for them to look at the projects that Kubrick had never realized. The research looked at the trauma of the holocaust, the human cost of war. They created a gauze box to contain the projection and mirrors which literally repeated and inverted the projected image acting as infinity mirrors, they expanded and unfolded the projected image. It was a benchmark for their ideas around identity loss of control, how images are received and continuing a dialogue with cinema as a major art form in the 20th century.

Methodologies used

The research involved attending the archive a day a week over the period of 6 months. We contacted the original lead actress Johanna ter Stieg, who was living in Harlem. They visited and interviewed her, which became the voice over for our film. They filmed a reconstruction of the original wardrobe shoot 15 years earlier (1993) and workshopped her character Tanya using lines from the film script. They also used archive images from Kubricks archive and the Ealing film studio archive from the 30's and 40's.