After Image (Seeing in the Dark)

Institute History

  • 1992 Directors Lab

Description

Joe, a New York homicide crime lab photographer, photographs the dead as if they were Rembrandt subjects. He captures the edge between life and the lifeless. The job carries its burdens, and the story begins on the day of his release from Belleview Hospital. Joe seeks solace and recovery in the basement apartment of his Crazy Aunt. Just a ferry ride from the big city, her antique oddity shop in a small harbor town becomes the setting for this psychic thriller.

Deaf since birth, Teva works for Crazy Aunt. By day, she scavenges the town hunting the latest antique treasure. By night, she sings her sign language poetry at an Underground Club. Joe first spies her in the courtyard as the soft morning light streams through the venetian blinds of Crazy Aunt's parlor window. At once, he is attracted to her stunning beauty and senses the unusual intensity in her dark eyes, a window to her soul. It is the beginning of a love story, half natural, half supernatural.

Living beneath the charred remains of an orphanage, Rye's inner world is revealed to us, translated through his "video diary." His chalky face appears to us when he removes the lens cap of his video camera. When he kills, he appears in Teva's premonitions.

As Teva and Joe's love grows stronger, Rye's killing moves closer.

Credits

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