The Quoddy Fold (Paulette Phillips, 2019)

A "quoddy," I just learned, is a type of sailboat traditionally used for fishing. It is very specific to the area where Maine meets New Brunswick, and it is a colloquialism that will mark one as hailing from that North Atlantic region. Canadian artist Paulette Phillips has made a very unusual film called The Quoddy Fold, and although I cannot find any actual definitions of this phrase, it suggests a number of things: a particular way of setting the sail, a coastal inlet, or even the close-knit group of people who might live in such a place, as in "welcome to the fold."

Regardless of the mysterious title, Phillips' film is a work of determined literalism. Over the course of an hour, Phillips disassembles an abandoned lakeside house that, based on the artifacts found inside, was probably last occupied in the 1920s. This of course doesn't count squatters, who might have ducked inside for a slight respite from the winter cold. Still, it wouldn't offer much of that, as the structure of the house is completely compromised. The primary action of The Quoddy Fold consists of Phillips ripping off wallpaper and pulling up linoleum, removing paneling and wooden slats with a crowbar, and essentially peeling this house apart from the inside out. 

This is a film about labor, and Phillips and her small crew remain fixed on the difficult process of moving material from one place to another, loosening nails, collapsing walls and staircases, and the fact that Phillips works alone lends the demolition a distinctly sculptural character. It's hard not to think about artists such as Robert Smithson and Gordon Matta-Clark while watching The Quoddy Fold, since Phillips' manipulation of building materials is both a destruction and a creation. Every time she disassembles one surface, another one is generated.

What adds to the haunting (and haunted) atmosphere of the film is Phillips' frequent focus on the contents of the house. There is a strange sense that the occupants of the home may have fled due to an emergency of some kind.  The cabinets are filled with china. There are remnants of furniture and tools. And most unnerving of all, Phillips finds a tied bundle of family photographs in a corner of the attic. As she goes through them, we are confronted with the fact that those who once lived in this uninhabitable space were real flesh and blood. They had lives, children, people who loved them. The Quoddy Fold is a meticulous demonstration of our transience.

[The Quoddy Fold will play the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and will be available to stream.]