VertiGhost
2017 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
12:47 minutes
Lynn Hershman Leeson
Using the seminal 1958 film Vertigo as a launchpad, Lynn Hershman Leeson explores the blurred lines between fact and fantasy in VertiGhost , a film commissioned by the Fine Arts Museums in San Francisco. VertiGhost features the re-creation of select scenes from Vertigo (which takes place in San Francisco), documentation of the life of a painting by Amedeo Modigliani in the Legion of Honor’s collection that was enshrouded by questions of authenticity, as well as interviews—including with the original film’s star Kim Novak— about the construction of realities in life and art. By thoughtfully overlaying these conversations and events, Hershman Leeson distills complex conversations around identity and authenticity into concise insights in just over 12 minutes. Hershman Leeson’s project explores the elusive nature of a singular identity, which haunts the characters in Hitchcock’s 1958 film—its most enigmatic representation being the painting of a supposed distant relative of the film’s protagonist Madeleine, around which her character and fate are imagined. In a powerful scene, psychologist and performer Nkechi Emeruwa sits at the Legion of Honor in the present day and recites her relationship with Alfred Hitchcock’s films. Growing up watching them with her mother in Nigeria, Emeruwa admits to watching his films with curiosity about the American mind. Having been raised in a place where she was considered the dominant culture, Emeruwa, a Black woman, says that in the United States that perspective is destabilized as she finds herself experiencing the world through the lens of its dominant culture—a white man. The film is full of complex moments like this one, challenging our common beliefs and provoking our notions.
Lynn Hershman Leeson is a celebrated Bay Area artist and filmmaker internationally renowned for her pioneering use of new technologies to explore key social issues. Her prolific body of work spans over four decades: from her early conceptual and performance works where she constructed an ‘official’ civilian record for her alter ego Roberta Breitmore, to her more recent works that intersect with the field of science to explore themes of identity, privacy, surveillance and the complex relationship between humans and technology, and the real and the virtual world. Hershman Leeson also addresses these key themes through her filmmaking, which is highly idiosyncratic and socially engaged. A notable example is her acclaimed documentary !Women Art Revolution , which focuses on the Feminist movement in the USA.
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