The Occidental Hotel

“The Occidental Hotel is a “city” film—I was inspired to emulate the Surrealists’ sense of wandering, of flaneury, of the way a hotel and its rooms is a temporary resting place inhabited by many many people, a shared public/private space. I am interested in a creative geography of the city I've constructed. For instance, the front of the hotel is from Berlin, its interior was photographed in Copenhagen. The film offers the elliptical “scent” of espionage films (largely because of its Berlin locations) and offers that genre’s lubricating sense of voyeurism, danger, and sexuality. My source materials are Mexican comic-book figures, and these urban photos I snapped on my honeymoon with my wife Janie Geiser in the summer of 1996.” —Lewis Klahr