Detour de Force (2014)

• 58%
• 2014
• Rebecca Baron

'Detour De Force' presents the world of 'thoughtographer' Ted Serios, a charismatic Chicago bell-hop who, in the mid-1960s appeared to produce hundreds of Polaroid images from his mind. Constructed from sixteen-millimetre documentation of Serios' sessions and audio recordings of Serios speaking with Dr. Jule Eisenbud, the Denver psychiatrist who championed his abilities, the film is more ethnography than biography, portraying the social and scientific environments in which Serios throve. The film foregrounds the state of the image and sound recording technologies of the period as essential to the emergence of Serios' seeming psychic photography. It is also a document of the film-maker's encounters with the archival material itself. The film enjoys a rich sound environment by Ernst Karel, Kyle Bruckmann and Giuseppe Ielasi.