Revivals
Suicide Note
Fred Camper
World Premiere of New Restoration · Currents
Shot largely in New York between 1976 and 1984, this newly restored, seldom-screened film from critic and artist Fred Camper is a fragmentary, diaristic work, capturing a cluttered and melancholic world on silent Super 8 Ektachrome reversal film.
- Runtime
- 110 min
- Country
- U.S.
- Language
- Silent
- More information
- Official film page
Screenings
Shot largely in New York in the late 1970s, and seldom screened publicly, this rare film from critic and artist Fred Camper is a fragmentary, diaristic work, capturing a cluttered and melancholic world on Super 8 reversal film. Haunted by its title, the film is at once intimate and opaque, rhapsodic and withdrawn, as its tremulous images attempt to reckon with the fleeting beauty of crowds, shop windows, domestic interiors, art exhibitions, and a panoptic view of New York City taken from the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Each screening of the film, which unfolds across 10 sections, is different from the last: the reels that make up its eighth section are determined by way of a chance operation performed before each projection. Previously known as SN, the film has now been given its full title (conceived after Camper’s stepfather took his own life and left no note), to coincide with this essential new restoration.
Suicide Note has been restored by Chicago Film Society with the support of the National Film Preservation Foundation and Big Creek Cooperative. Picture Restoration: BB Optics; 4K Scan and Laboratory Services: Colorlab.
Shot largely in New York in the late 1970s, and seldom screened publicly, this rare film from critic and artist Fred Camper is a fragmentary, diaristic work, capturing a cluttered and melancholic world on Super 8 reversal film. Haunted by its title, the film is at once intimate and opaque, rhapsodic and withdrawn, as its tremulous images attempt to reckon with the fleeting beauty of crowds, shop windows, domestic interiors, art exhibitions, and a panoptic view of New York City taken from the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Each screening of the film, which unfolds across 10 sections, is different from the last: the reels that make up its eighth section are determined by way of a chance operation performed before each projection. Previously known as SN, the film has now been given its full title (conceived after Camper’s stepfather took his own life and left no note), to coincide with this essential new restoration.
Suicide Note has been restored by Chicago Film Society with the support of the National Film Preservation Foundation and Big Creek Cooperative. Picture Restoration: BB Optics; 4K Scan and Laboratory Services: Colorlab.