August, 2023

A short film by Adamska Elizaveta Rakhilkina

Cinematography by mikey baratta

Online

“Caretaker” follows a specter that took an unconventional artist residency in a school of art. It is both — an intimate study of a superfluous man stuck in the academic setting like a ghost to its haunt throughout the series of endless nights; and a topographic portrait of the institution as shelter. This short film marries Chantel Akerman’s forlorn minimalism of “Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels” and the side-splitting mania of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” presenting a fleshy ghost story against the backdrop of an American university.

Following Mark Fisher’s Ghosts of My Life: ‘haunt’ signifies both the dwelling-place, the domestic scene and that which invades or disturbs it. The OED lists one of the earliest meanings of the word ‘haunt’ as ‘to provide with a home, house’..

and, of course, after Kubrick’s The Shining: I’m sorry to differ with you, sir. But you are the caretaker. You’ve always been the caretaker. I should know, sir. I’ve always been here.

Get out your handkerchiefs — home is where the haunt is.