Teleplasm

With Teleplasm, Kate Solar dives into her family’s legacy and their curiosity about the occult. Borrowing from investigative documentary codes, Solar examines her great-great-grandfather’s spirit photography. In the early 1900s in Winnipeg, T.G. Hamilton would hold seances for the local crowd, summoning spirits and attempting to capture them on film. Whereas an authoritative history majorly credits Hamilton, Solar becomes increasingly interested in a feminist historiography of his practice, raising the important contribution Lillian, her great great grandmother, made. Featuring stunning reconstitutions of T.G. Hamilton’s photographs, the film also opens up reflexively on the existing intersections between science, technology and spirituality, thus weaving image-making and storytelling intimately.