The Shining: Forwards and Backwards - Enzian Theater

Immortalized in Rodney Asher’s documentary ROOM 237, THE SHINING: FORWARDS AND BACKWARDS is a masterwork of experimental video manipulation. John Fell Ryan and Akiva Saunders’ hallucinatory palindromic love letter to Kubrick’s finely tuned symmetric compositions. Created in 2011, Ryan explained “we put the US DVD version into Final Cut, removed all corporate logos and leaders at the beginning, and cut all credits at the end. The entire film image sequence was then copied, reversed, and superimposed over the original forwards version.” What results is a mesmerizing acid trip experience of uncanny coincidences (or perhaps like the ‘satanic panic’ of the 1980s, secret hidden messages when played in reverse) wherein the images and themes contained in Kubrick’s film are at times contradictory and complimentary to the story being told. In short, this is THE SHINING as you have never seen it (or dreamed it) before. Join us on this rare journey into the literal and figurative fracturing of cinematic sanity and get ready to get freaky!

1980/2011, 142 minutes Rated R, Directed by Stanley Kubrick

“An experimental project that actually made 'The Shining' more terrifying”
– Matthew L. Brady, LETTERBOXD
“This is such a profoundly unnerving experience, in both the uncanniness of its textures, shapes, movement, space, time, faces, bodies - but also in the complex and disturbing associations made between certain scenes, images, moments. The film shines on itself.”
– Patrickp2001, LETTERBOXD
“The superimposition is a true psychedelic experience, the titular shining of film made literal, a vision of futures past, somewhere out between magic and madness.”
– THE ROXIE THEATER