Footnotes to a House of Love
2007, 13 min, 16mm
With: Sandy Ding, Eliza Douglas, Laura Merando,
Sally Oviatt, Lucas Quigley and Laura Steenberge
“Laida Lertxundi ’s Footnotes to a House of Love, also set in southern California, was in some ways the aftermath to the apocalyptic buildup of SpaceDisco-One. The desert, so often a stand-in for other places imagined by Hollywood, here is barren and bright, set to the tune of Leslie Gore and the Kinks playing through an intrepid little tape deck. The tinny sound carries through a broken down house, a house without walls and whose door falls down the moment someone tries to open it. People drift by and a couple makes love on a sheet laid out in the sand; it’s not clear where the house ends and the desert begins. The music plays in most of the film like a radio signal, a relic of another time, now gone. The film is pervaded with the sense of something having happened, though we’re given only brief glimpses of what came after.”
–Genevieve Yue, Senses of Cinema
“Laida Lertxundi’s Footnotes to a House of Love is the type of thing you hope for at a festival: something remarkable by someone you’ve never heard of. not much happens in the film - much to its credit. A young couple inhabits a dilapidated house in the California desert. They read, play the cello, piss, but mostly just walk about. Their actions, however, are entirely peripheral to the film. Footnotes is most centrally about the presence of place, the house and the desert beyond, and the possibilities they seem to invite. narra- tives and relationships are only just hinted at and seemingly swallowed up by the surroundings. There is a subtle mysteriousness to the place that could easily have made it a site for terror, or at least danger, but this is constantly leavened by a gentle, disarming playfulness and teasing.”
–Patrick Friel, Senses of Cinema
“The Grand prize of Basque Cinema, Footnotes to a House of Love, by Laida Lertxundi, begins by weaving a series of brushstrokes in the form of annotations, using fragmentation (and the partial use of off frame) and long shots to transform the non-actor into non-character. Maneuver by which all is left is the referent of the California desert landscape. There is a break with cinematographic boundaries and a departure into the terrain of video art.”
–Cahiers Du Cinema, Spain
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2007, 13 min, 16mm
With: Sandy Ding, Eliza Douglas, Laura Merando,
Sally Oviatt, Lucas Quigley and Laura Steenberge
“Laida Lertxundi ’s Footnotes to a House of Love, also set in southern California, was in some ways the aftermath to the apocalyptic buildup of SpaceDisco-One. The desert, so often a stand-in for other places imagined by Hollywood, here is barren and bright, set to the tune of Leslie Gore and the Kinks playing through an intrepid little tape deck. The tinny sound carries through a broken down house, a house without walls and whose door falls down the moment someone tries to open it. People drift by and a couple makes love on a sheet laid out in the sand; it’s not clear where the house ends and the desert begins. The music plays in most of the film like a radio signal, a relic of another time, now gone. The film is pervaded with the sense of something having happened, though we’re given only brief glimpses of what came after.”
–Genevieve Yue, Senses of Cinema
“Laida Lertxundi’s Footnotes to a House of Love is the type of thing you hope for at a festival: something remarkable by someone you’ve never heard of. not much happens in the film - much to its credit. A young couple inhabits a dilapidated house in the California desert. They read, play the cello, piss, but mostly just walk about. Their actions, however, are entirely peripheral to the film. Footnotes is most centrally about the presence of place, the house and the desert beyond, and the possibilities they seem to invite. narra- tives and relationships are only just hinted at and seemingly swallowed up by the surroundings. There is a subtle mysteriousness to the place that could easily have made it a site for terror, or at least danger, but this is constantly leavened by a gentle, disarming playfulness and teasing.”
–Patrick Friel, Senses of Cinema
“The Grand prize of Basque Cinema, Footnotes to a House of Love, by Laida Lertxundi, begins by weaving a series of brushstrokes in the form of annotations, using fragmentation (and the partial use of off frame) and long shots to transform the non-actor into non-character. Maneuver by which all is left is the referent of the California desert landscape. There is a break with cinematographic boundaries and a departure into the terrain of video art.”
–Cahiers Du Cinema, Spain
download press release
back