BeDevil
Clip 3: The flip side
2 min 57 sec
Taken from the feature BeDevil (1993)
Original title classification not known – this clip chosen to be PG
Availability of the complete title
Please be aware that this clip may contain the names, images and voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who may now be deceased.
Curator’s clip description
A young boy is suddenly awoken from his sleep. Before him stand two spirits, a man and a woman. They clasp hands, and disappear through the wall of the boy’s bedroom. The boy follows them. They are the spirit of the couple who died in the warehouse when it caught fire. The boy enters the condemned warehouse where, bathed in red, the spirits of the dead couple dance. The boy, wearing rollerskates, begins to dance with them. He turns and flips, circling the spirit couple who dance as though oblivious to his presence.
Curator’s notes
BeDevil deals with the co-existence of narratives, of stories that run alongside, below and atop each other. They are the stories of present and past, and the ghost stories in BeDevil represent the presence of those who have passed, and how they haunt those who exist in the now. The boy in the final third of BeDevil seems to join the story, to become part of the ‘spirit narrative’ so to speak. He becomes part of it by no longer ignoring it, but affirming its existence, and we get a sense that in doing so, he affirms his own place, his own existence.
Romaine Moreton, curator
