ABOUT

“Hotel Mnemosyne” explores my infatuation with memory, which parallels an ever-pursuing disease. Completing this film has enabled me to come to terms with and transcend my painful relationship with remembrance.


The larger part of the soundtrack is derived from my San Francisco Art Institute teacher, Christopher Coppola’s licensed PAHFest music. Visually, this film presents a formalistic experimentation with various aspects of 16mm film including matte box superimpositions, speed adjustments, a fish eye lens as well as extracts of found footage from my school.

This 16mm film, featuring short Super 8 intervals, is subdivided into five main parts or “rooms”. Each features a particular memory: whether it be my youthful fantasy of a flying hare; my perception of a forest druid, a double exposure; my constant dualism of the self simultaneously being in the present and in the past.

The last chapter presents a young girl dwelling back into her past of prostitution in an abandoned winery, which used to be a harlot house called “Hotel Mnemosyne”. In ancient Greece, “Mnemosyne” referred to the goddess of memory and mother by Zeus of the Muses. In a jerky, documentary style, the camera, likewise to a stalker, follows a young girl through this abandoned space, identified by the sign "Hotel Mnemosyne" at the entrance.

As soon as the heroine enters the central room, she begins convulsing in a slightly epileptic fashion. All throughout, her ego separates into three: each trapped in a monotonous, ritualistic action. These actions include undressing after, setting letters on fire and seeking oblivion in drinking wine. The circle narrative structure serves to bring home the relentless nature of the process of remembering.