The Pathos of JFKurosawa, 1999, video, color, sound, total running time 38 seconds
The Pathos of JFKurosawa merges together audio from the climactic finale of Akira Kurosawa’s 1949 film Stray Dog with a three second video clip from Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK; yet the result formed by the new combination is certainly at variance with the intention of either director. Through live recording of manually “scrubbing the time line” (rapidly scrolling forwards and backwards through the video footage) a pathologist is made to continuously and excitedly inspect one of John F. Kennedy’s bullet exit wounds with the tip of his gloved finger. Coupled with Stray Dog’s crescendo of uncontrolled sobbing – the apprehension of the killer after 122 minutes – the originally brief and clinical procedure is altered into something emotionally cathartic, torturously extended, and darkly erotic.
