In Encore (Resurrection Manifestations), an usherette dressed in a grey velvet bellboy-style jacket and matching trousers lies asleep. Her hands clutch a black usherette tray, on which rests a pyramid of green popcorn… With a nod to David Lean’s 1945 film Blithe Spirit, which also conjured ghosts using innovative green make-up and lighting effects, Williams Gamaker sets her film in a palatial, ghostly art deco ex-cinema on Essex Road. A space of fantasy and cinephilia, Encore, is a filmmaker’s folly, in which the cinema and its ghosts are resurrected. Here, the usherette (played by Lucy Ma Orange) brings two Hollywood starlets back to life with her glowing green popcorn.
The film was commissioned as part of the fifth year of Tintype’s annual Essex Road program, where eight artists are invited to make a short film in response to the eponymous, mile-long road where the gallery was situated.
