Film’s ephemeral, eerie, and uncanny nature takes shape in the fleeting form of shadows, ghosts and doppelgangers, coherent and unstable in equal measure. Ghosts of history, cultures, and myths, shadows ranging from those cut out of paper to those created by moonlight, and the dark sides of protagonists often brought to light by the figure of the doppelganger all foretell the uncanny, the strange, and the unknown. In the darkness of the movie theater, we encounter the shudder as the original principle of cinema, just like how it plays with time, identities, perception, and disbelief, as we perhaps also sometimes feel something of our own shadows in these projected, imaginary images. This month’s Magical History Tour invites viewers to attend 17 very different encounters – with magical rites, restless ghosts, illusionary shadows, and doppelgangers on the loose.
