Vertighost. 2017. USA. Written and directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson. Digital. 13 min.
Longshot. 1989. USA. Written and directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson. Digital. 60 min.
Commissioned by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and shot at the Palace of the Legion of Honor—where Alfred Hitchcock hung Carlotta Valdes’s portrait and showed Scottie seeing and obsessing over Madeleine for the first time in Vertigo — Vertighost is a playful tribute to that film and an elegant depiction of Lynn Hershman Leeson’s most recurrent themes: identity, vigilance, trauma, male dominance, and the perception of what is real and fictional. In Longshot, Hershman Leeson shoots a faux documentary about a young female drifter whose identity and talent are manipulated by a video editor: a man who has been secretly filming her to control and manipulate her destiny, image, and self-assurance.