CABLE BOX

Video (SD) . 2021 . 16:45

Funded by the Canada Council of the Arts

Distributed by Vidéographe

Taking place in an unspecified year in the early 1990s, a night of mindless television channel flipping is slowly interrupted and overtaken by a pirate television signal. A flood of colours emanating from video feedback, warring tribes displayed through a modified oscilloscope, and a flurry of gun violence repeated via luminance keying dominate stations one by one. Abstract imagery through analog video glitch techniques forewarn the passive television viewer that the far-right American political system to come will not be the result of a sudden shift. Instead we will see a rise of increasingly conservative policies followed by a moulding of public perception by broadcast television. As Cable Box progresses, commercials, sitcoms, and nightly news segments begin to highlight the true nature of broadcast television: to serve the financial and neoliberal interests of media conglomerates.

Composed of found footage sourced through hundreds of VHS tapes, Cable Box is faithful to the video-art tradition of turning the analog television signal against itself. Like Nam June Paik and Richard Serra before him, director Rob Feulner (b. 1987) uses broadcast television tools to demonstrate that the television signal controls society for an elite agenda while creating thematic links to our current Internet landscape.

Under non-exclusive distribution with Vidéographe. For screening consideration please email info [at] bleunuitvideo [dot] com. I'm also very interested in public access television broadcasts, and have developed a 28-minute program which includes films by Paloma Kop and Charlotte Clermont.

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CREDITS

Director: Rob Feulner
Writer: Rob Feulner
Editor: Rob Feulner
Producer: Max Séguéla
Musical Score: Nick Maturo
Sound Designer: Sacha Ratcliffe
Sound Mixer: Bernard Gariépy Strobl
Post-Production Supervisors: Bertrand Paquette & Simon Allard
Online Editor: Hugo Mazo
Color Corrector: Martin Gaumond
Poster Design: Paloma Kop

SCREENINGS

Festival ECRÃ (world premiere). Rio de Janeiro . July 2021
Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival. Guangzhou, China . Dec 2021
Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival . Louisiana, USA . Jan 2022
Austin Public (television broadcast) . Texas, USA . June 2022
Cable Box poster