Double Take (2009)

Double Take is a playful and unsettling essay film in which Alfred Hitchcock encounters his own double against the backdrop of Cold War paranoia. Combining archival news footage, television broadcasts, advertising, fragments of Hitchcock’s work, and a fictional story inspired by Jorge Luis Borges, the film turns the figure of the double into a way of thinking about fear, media, and political power.

Moving between Nixon and Khrushchev, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Hitchcock’s The Birds, and cheerful instant-coffee commercials, Johan Grimonprez traces the moment when television entered the home and transformed catastrophe into everyday spectacle. Politics and entertainment begin to mirror one another, while fear itself becomes something that can be produced, packaged, and consumed.

Johan Grimonprez is a Belgian filmmaker and artist whose work explores the relationship between media, political history, collective memory, and the circulation of images.

Belgium / Germany / Netherlands 2009 | 80'