Johan Grimonprez

Looking for Alfred. The Hitchcock Castings.
2007
hardcover

Looking for Alfred documents Johan Grimonprez's prize-winning film of the same name, an homage to Alfred Hitchcock in the form of a search for the perfect Hitchcock doppelganger and vignettes starring those multiple would-be Hitchcocks, reenacting his cameos. Casting calls and screen tests in London, Rotterdam, Los Angeles and New York are documented in film stills and photos. Line-readings from Truffaut's famous 1960s interview with the master and scenes in which Hitchcock acted as an extra are further grist for the mill. Beyond the work's mockumentary structure, Grimonprez evokes the Hitchcockian universe uncannily, and connects back - through the recurring motif of a man in a suit and a bowler hat - to another great modern auteur, Rene Magritte.

 

 

Publlished by Hatje Cantz. 

Texts by Patricia Allmer, Jorge Luis Borges, Chris Darke, Thomas Elsaesser, Tom McCarthy, Jeff Noon, Slavoj Zizek

Edited by Steven Bode.