2011 ✣ Video

On the surface, Love Rose appears to be the story of a man attempting to contact a woman through a séance, guided by instructions penned by Hereward Carrington in 1920 and voiced by poet and novelist Lynne Tillman. Delving into the fears and anxieties of adolescence, Love Rose is rooted in my personal experiences as a young queer navigating puberty—specifically, my never-materialized attraction to women. By my 20s, this developed into an internalized homophobia that caused me to present as either gay, bisexual, or straight depending on the circumstances. These three personas form the circle of the séance. Set against the backdrop of what appears to be lost footage from the early 1970s, I envisioned Love Rose as a manifestation of the protagonist's attempt to conjure normalcy in an unaccepting world. Shot entirely with analog black and white TV studio cameras from the early 1970s, the film embraces a technological phenomenon known as 'ghosting.' This effect occurs when light photons scatter and blur through the vacuum tubes of the video camera, rendering haunting and ethereal light trails, black halos, and scan lines that swirl endlessly into the unknown. Love Rose is the first in a trilogy of esoterically themed films, alongside The Evil Eyes, captured with these vintage cameras.