Filmmaker Statement

When filming a series of artist films in abandoned places in France, I had the strange experience of finding a cassette tape which had a recording of the man who had lived in the building, giving a speech to UNESCO. It was introduced in English so a sudden feeling of direct conversation with the deceased owner of the crumbling building I was in was bizarre and frankly unsettling. It definitely sparked something, some sort of start point for a film. I put it to the back of my head until stumbling on New Atlantis by Sir Francis Bacon about a mysterious hidden Utopia, ‘Bensalem’ and the film suddenly took shape. I love the idea of these two friends exploring this crumbling, derelict building only to be confronted with something so unexpected. It's something my friends did as teenagers and I always found it terrifying