Specters of the Image

Film theory has long understood the photographic image as a medium uniquely tied to reality. Whether through Bazin’s account of photography’s ontology, or Barthes’ formulation of ça-a-été (“that-has-been”) in Camera Lucida, photography has consistently been regarded as an index pointing toward real existence: when we look at an image, we are also looking at something that once truly existed.

However, the works in this film program continually unsettle this conviction.

What they encounter is not reality’s presence, but the trace of its absence. Exhausted industrial cities, people who have passed away, unrecognizable graveyards, obsolete archives, incorrect timestamps, failed-exposure film rolls, and generative images that no longer depend on reality as their referent—the objects captured by the camera are often already gone, invisible, or even never truly existed at all.

Thus, the question raised by these works is no longer “how to represent reality,” but rather: “when reality is absent, what remains of the image?”

Derrida once used the term “hauntology” to describe a particular mode of existence: the ghost belongs neither fully to being nor non-being, but forever haunts the threshold between presence and absence. The same holds true for images. Every image carries a certain absence—it always records a time already past, becoming an image only after reality has departed.

In these films, absence no longer signifies emptiness. On the contrary, absence becomes the very condition through which the image comes into being.

The deceased re-enter the frame through domestic rituals; vanished cities continue to exist through discarded news footage; the future manifests prematurely through machine glitches; and unrecorded experiences leave their marks upon a roll of blank film.

If traditional cinema attempts to make the invisible visible, these works go a step further: they compel us to recognize that all images may have always been an art of absence.

The camera has never been merely a recording machine—it is a device for conjuring spirits. In addition, due to copyright or licensing restrictions, WHISPERS IN THE RAIN (Qi Zhang, 2024) on this film list is currently unavailable for streaming on CathayPlay.

Non-Streaming Titles

1. WHISPERS IN THE RAIN (Qi Zhang, 2024)

A journey to locate a grave gradually evolves into an allegory of memory and loss. Overgrown weeds cover the cemetery, erasing the very index pointing toward the deceased. When the family finally abandons their search, the film enters another dimension: the sound of wind, light, and space together construct a haunting, spectral presence. The camera’s position is no longer merely that of an observer; it seems to become the perspective of the departed looking upon the living. The grave has vanished, yet the image begins to speak. It is precisely where material traces fail that memory reclaims its shape.