The Crow Furnace

30 minutes • video • 2015

A narrative poem-essay about San Francisco, urban displacements, and the spectacle of loss. Two protagonists journey through a purgatorial time and place, encountering sights and objects from the city’s history of catastrophic fires – a metaphor for the disappearance of communities.

A powerful meditation on the history of San Francisco… She has a distinct and powerful cinematic voice, deftly combining disparate materials with a sure sense of rhythm and an innate feeling for the poetic resonances of images. …Each new moment brings rich associations, leading the viewer into a new appreciation of both the terror and the beauty of living in a place which continually rises from the ashes of its own reckless energy.

-David Finkelstein, Film International

Watch 2 minute trailer

Artist’s Statement

“The Crow Furnace” is a found footage film that was assembled with clips from more than 100 16mm film reels, Super 8 home movies, fire department video archives, and other materials to present a history of San Francisco as told through the element of fire. In constructing a fictional tale to present history at a mythic level, “The Crow Furnace” also aims to make a work about the Myth of San Francisco itself. The film focuses on the psychogeography of San Francisco’s history of fire since its founding in 1776, the same year as American Independence. In many ways, I see San Francisco as a stand-in for the trajectory of the American nation. My film explores historic cycles of destruction and rebirth, gold rush booms and busts, expansion and displacement. The film is inspired by the Western myth of progress and the frontier and its contemporary dark side – redevelopment, gentrification, the disappearance of communities. Or as the film’s narrator describes it, “a spectacle of loss.”

“The Crow Furnace” originated as my MFA thesis project at the University of California-San Diego Visual Arts department. The project was influenced by numerous sources, including Dante’s Divine Comedy, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Jungian psychology, and the process of alchemy. It is also a homage to the work of several directors, including Chris Marker, Craig Baldwin, and Alfred Hitchcock.