HSP: There Is No Escape From The Terrors Of The Mind is an experimental feature film by Rouzbeh Rashidi, funded by The Arts Council of Ireland and produced by Experimental Film Society.
It consists of three medium length instalments of an ongoing film project by Rashidi,Homo Sapiens Project. These instalments, when watched back-to-back, will function as a single film structured in episodes.
A mysterious loner (James Devereaux), perhaps a poet, journeys through a series of uncanny surrealistic landscapes with an unclear purpose. His adventure is divided into three sections:
1_He wanders and prowls through dream-like landscapes and strange cryptic locations as if searching for something.
2_He encounters vague figures and discusses topics such as art, aesthetics, narration and mundane daily life.
3_The woman he loves, Patricia. He meets up with her from time to time in a haunted house where they play out the rituals of their unusual and obscure relationship. Eventually, she vanishes in the woods one day while they are out strolling together.
The main theme of this experiment is to compare the eerier qualities of different landscapes and interpose the characters within them, elaborating the project’s ongoing preoccupation with extracting sinister moods from ordinary settings. In a way, these can be seen as experimental horror films in which an atmosphere of dread is evoked and sustained without the expected narrative trappings.
