Detour de Force

Detour de Force presents the world of thoughtographer Ted Serios, a charismatic Chicago bell hop who, in the mid-1960’s produced hundreds of Polaroid images from his mind. Constructed from 16mm documentation of Serios’s sessions and audio recordings of Serios speaking with Dr. Jule Eisenbud, the Denver psychiatrist who championed his abilities, the film is more ethnography than biography, portraying the social and scientific environments in which Serios thrived. The film foregrounds the state of image and sound recording technologies of the period as essential to the emergence of Serios’s psychic photography. It is also a document of the filmmaker’s encounters with the archival materials themselves.

The film enjoys a rich sound environment by Ernst Karel, Kyle Bruckmann and Guiseppe Ielasi.

Film by Rebecca Baron

Concept and research by Rebecca Baron and Doug Goodwin

Music by EKG (Ernst Karel and Kyle Bruckman) with Guiseppe Ielasi

Sound Mix by Ernst Karel

Produced in collaboration with the Austrian Film Museum Vienna