Lady Lamp II (2023): Shimmering Images in a World of Ghosts

Sometimes all it takes to make a good film is a lady and a lamp (that - and an Adobe Premiere Pro subscription).The dreamy first shot of Kaitlyn Carey’s Lady Lamp II - a woman with a lampshade on her head walking down a dark road - lasts a full minute, but the bare bones elements of it are so evocative on their own that it only takes 10 seconds to become immersed in its world. In many experimental short films, the imagery of “liminal spaces”- a term that has become widely overused and misused - serves to evoke unease. The image of a long, dark, never-ending road or a shadowy electric grid in the middle of a field typically corresponds to the horror genre, yet although this can be effective at mining fear, sometimes it’s more interesting to serve the opposite function. In Lady Lamp II, these spaces envelop the viewer with euphoria. The ambient track “In Motion” by Ann Annie drones on as the titular lady illuminates her surroundings with every step and long cross dissolves lead us into each subsequent shot. It often appears that the lady exists in two places at once through the layering of these images which stretch and fold time on top of itself. She looks back at herself walking down the road, the light produced from her head forming a halo around her and echoing across space and time like a good omen. Carey’s experimentation with light and time opens a gateway to a ghostly world that feels comforting despite (or because of) its strangeness. Pitch-black night skies dissolve into deep blues, lights from the electric grid reflect and flare against the lens like stars, and translucent cars pass on the highway like spirits traveling through planes of existence. These overlapping shimmering images appear fragile - as if when you reach out to touch them, they’ll evaporate like water, and you’ll have to wait to fall asleep at night to return to them in your dreams.

Check out more of Kaitlyn Carey’s work here!