The Fourth Watch

The Fourth Watch
The Fourth Watch

2000, 16 mm, colour, sound, 11 min.

"The ancient Greeks divided the night into four sections; the last section before morning was called the fourth watch. In these hours before dawn, an endless succession of rooms is inhabited by silent film figures occupying flickering space in a mid-century house made of printed tin. Their presence is at once inevitable and uncanny.
A boy turns his head in dread, a woman's eyes look askance, a sleepwalker reaches into a cabinet which dissolves with her touch, and hands write letters behind disappearing windows. The empty rooms continually reassert themselves and fill with impossible, shadowed light."

Janie Geiser

"The Fourth Watch (2000) is the finest film to date by Los Angeles puppet and animation artist Janie Geiser.
Silent-movie actors filmed off a video monitor are superimposed on the interior of a dollhouse, their flickering images so expertly fused with the miniature rooms' bright, solid colors that they create a fragile lost world evoking both theater and the movies."

Fred Camper
Chicago Reader, September 14, 2001