UC San Diego

"Crow Furnace" is a 30-minute long experimental narrative film created in the tradition of the found footage genre. It combines live action video with archival and 16mm found footage to present a historiography of the city of San Francisco as mediated through the element of fire. Two protagonists from different times, a Fireman and a Singer, become stranded in a purgatory state after the moment of their death. Realizing they share a destiny of crossed signals, they undertake a quest to solve the mystery of how they passed and how the two of them might be connected. Along the way, they encounter an itinerary of sights and objects that pertain to psychogeographic places in the city's collective memory. For as they try to solve their individual mysteries, the Fireman and the Singer also bear witness to the larger mystery of San Francisco - a force mediated and activated through the element of fire. In constructing a fictional tale to present history at a mythic level, "Crow Furnace" also aims to make a work about the Myth of San Francisco itself.