Andrew Gingerich

Filmmaker/Educator

About

Andrew Gin­gerich is a film­mak­er whose work explores notions of fam­i­ly, dis­so­ci­at­ed iden­ti­ties, region­al alle­giances, and the bound­aries of fic­tion. He lives and teach­es in Michi­gan’s Upper Peninsula.

Call to Forehead

  • 1 minute
  • 16mm
  • Col­or
  • My role: Co-Direc­tor/Cin­e­matog­ra­pher/Ed­i­tor
"Call to Forehead" poster

A short film in the style of a ’70s thriller trailer.

A mys­te­ri­ous, malev­o­lent fore­head from the sev­enth dimen­sion is wreak­ing hav­oc on the lives of inno­cents. It can make phone calls, and move lamps with its mind. Even if you escape, you will NEVER! be the same.

Director’s statement

I have a great fond­ness for the sorts of trashy thrillers I used to see adver­tised at the begin­nings of heav­i­ly-worn Block­buster video­cas­settes. Call to Fore­head, made in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Vin­cent Gag­ne­pain, was our homage to these cheap­ly-made, over­wrought genre movies.

In order to best emu­late the par­tic­u­lar tex­ture of such trail­ers, we shot on 16mm film. Our graph­ics were designed using only tech­niques that would have been cheap­ly avail­able at the time, and incor­po­rat­ed the dis­tinc­tive jit­ter of a low-qual­i­ty opti­cal print­er. The final edit was rout­ed through a peri­od VCR to intro­duce a soupçon of ana­log smearing.