Leslie Stiles

'Hall porter forced to join Navy while tracking spies.' (British Film Catalogue)

In-between essay and fiction, La dernière énigme established Ossang's formal territory: a contemporary mythology. Inspired by the book On Terrorism and the State by Gianfranco Sanguinetti, it evokes visual echoes of political events, where a generation forfeits all revolutionary aspirations due to state terrorism. Shot using two cans of Kodak XX 16mm film. - IFFR

La Zone - the poor, dangerous quarters of Paris (George Lacombe, 1928); the administrative zone where Orpheus looks for his lost Eurydice (Jean Cocteau, 1950); Interzone - the working title for Naked Lunch (W.S. Burroughs, 1959). In 1983, Ossang created a synthesis of all these territories of unrest under a banner of dead colours. - IFFR

Holmes is called to a manor house to investigate the brutal murder of a country lord with a fireplace poker and reconcile the story of his bruised and battered wife with the facts.