Doublewide

We are sealed in steel in soil in tight. Essentials of subterranean safe houses: steel bunk beds, anticipatory mattresses, efficient long-wear gray low pile carpet, storage everywhere. Surveillance cameras transmitting multiple views to your screens. Solar-powered long-lasting battery, water purification and heating systems, air filtration, two kitchens with fridge stove microwave, three bathrooms, garden plots prepared with soil and sun lamps, a gun range. Special filters to suck out the smoke after each shot.
It could be a gallery, a museum, a biotech company, the set from Kubrick’s 2001, white and pure and clean. I try to imagine it furnished but cannot. Perhaps the owners will hire an interior designer specializing in windowless spaces. I envision bright cheery colors chosen to keep away memories of outdoors and the gloom of sunken living. Save yourself and your immediate family.
Doublewide is a portrait of a Texas-based company that sells, constructs, and installs custom-made, secure steel subterranean hideouts for wealthy clients. A trip to one of their newly completed bunkers in Michigan reveals a fortified underground world for the wealthy to retreat from global crises.
by Jenny Perlin USA 2019 English 18’ Colour World premiere | Documentary form

Crew

Director Jenny Perlin
Cinematography Jenny Perlin
Editing Jenny Perlin
Sound Jenny Perlin
Producer Jenny Perlin

Produced by

The Hoosac Institute

Jenny Perlin

Jenny Perlin, born in 1970 in Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA, is an artist working in Brooklyn. Her practice in 16mm film, video, and drawing works with and against the documentary tradition, incorporating innovative stylistic techniques to emphasize issues of truth, misunderstanding, and personal history. Her projects look closely at ways in which social machinations are reflected in the smallest fragments of daily life. Perlin’s works have been shown in numerous exhibitions and film festivals worldwide. In 2015, two of her 16mm films were included in Forum Expanded.

Filmography

1994 Nove Hranice/New Borders; 22 min. 1998 The Whole History of That; 17 min. 1999 Lost Treasures; 3 min. · Happy are the Happy (your best joke, please); with Sarah Jane Lapp, 17 min. · Dear Jim and Dick; 30 min. 2000 From To Subject Date Reply; 3 min. · The Very Last View; 6 min. 2001 Perseverance; 8 min. · Capsules; 6 min. 2002 Schumann; 7 min. · View from Elsewhere; 22 min. · Rorschach; 7 min. 2003 The United States in a Chaotic World; 3 min. · All-American Dinner; 3 min. · Perseverance and How to Develop It; 14 min. 2004 Possible Models; 11 min. · Sight Reading; video installation, 7 min. · Review; 3 min. 2005 Amend; 5 min. 2006 Notes; 3 min. · Associated; 12 min. · Copies; 3 min. · Inaudible; 3 min. · Transcript; 11 min. 2007 Flight; 5 min. · Box Office; 2 min. · Ending and Altered; 9 min. 2008 Storage; 4 min. 2009 Leads; 6 min. · Dust of Snow; 6 min. 2010 Mimeograph; 20 min. 2011 The Object of Society Is; 12 min. 2012 The Perlin Papers; 54 min. · A Thousand Sentences; 12 min. 2013 The Same Moon Everywhere; 13 min. 2014 100 Sinkholes; 7 min., Forum Expanded 2015 · Inks; 1 min., Forum Expanded 2015 2016 Tender Not Approved; 10 min. · Twilight Arc; 12 min. 2017 The Crystal King; 3 min. · Those Are Stars; 3 min. 2018 The Long Sleepers (Preface); 27 min. 2019 Testament; 3 min. · Truth comes in with darkness; 3 min. · For a voice to speak; 3 min. · Each thing its place; 3 min. · Ed of Subterra; 20 min. 2020 Doublewide; 18 min.

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2020