Forth presents a series of films by Daniel Hopp, including a raw cut of ‘Dark Spots’ (2022), ‘If There is Love You Will Take It’ (2020), and ‘Jump’, (2018).
Hopp’s filmmaking process gathers relatives, friends, professional actors and himself in performative constellations. When shooting begins, the performance has already begun, set in motion through a narrative structure derived from the implicit premises and rules of the locations, activated by the group itself. Following the evolving group dynamics within these constellations, the protagonists of these films become bodies, fears and desires; mirroring the fictitiousness, respectively the impossibility of being “true“ to, or even knowing, oneself.
The films’ characters are not only derived from the protagonists’ autobiographies but amalgamated with additional research material through the editing process following the unforeseeable interactions between performers, roles and images. Drawing upon these interactions, Hopp’s films seek to open up an oscillating movement between the formation and dissolution of identity within both the representation and performance of gender, ethnicity and class throughout contemporary societies.
In ‘Jump’ two generations live in one house, missing each other even when they sit face to face at the same table whilst partaking in the ritual of a meal. No Oedipal struggle for recognition connects them, the gesture of outdoing appears as a quotation. On the horizon, a realistic aesthetic of the present appears, subliminally tuned to the possibility of common mourning for the encounter that has become impossible.
“If There is Love, You Will Take It” encompasses the overlappings of cinematic and everyday life constructions of reality and fiction. While we widely acknowledge that reality is constructed just as much as fiction, this realization doesn’t protect us from the effects the former produces. “Play the gangster you’d like to be” is the task the protagonists, self-proclaimed “tough boys” and the artist and director himself, take up in a cultural center and inoffical gambling spot in a red light district. What does a gangster talk like? References from advertising slogans, rap songs and old school gangster films are implemented into the protagonists’ speech and reverberate back to the speakers through the mechanical mouths of the cute stuffed talking animals sitting on the table.
In a raw cut of latest work ‘Dark Spots’, the line between performance and reality in Hopp’s practice is further blurred into nauseating ambiguity. Mother and Son are joined in the home by an unspoken weight, documentary slips into horror, becoming increasingly personal and ushering in a recognisable sense of banal family dread. The situation inevitably unravels, spiralling around regret, resentment and acceptance, all against the persisting uncertain despair of unanswered questions and unfulfilled possibilities.
Part of Summer Screen at Forth, a selection of films by international artists, viewable by appointment
