Looking for Alfred is a work by Johan Grimonprez who has garnered international recognition for his genre-defying films that explore media, memory, and the politics of representation. His work has been exhibited in major museums worldwide, including the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (California), Pinakothek der Moderne (Munich), and Tate Modern (London).
Grimonprez first rose to prominence with his critically acclaimed film essay dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, which debuted at Documenta X in Kassel, Germany in 1997. The film eerily anticipated the events of 9/11 through its unsettling examination of media narratives and airplane hijackings. Since then, Grimonprez’s films have been featured in major international film festivals, including New York, Edinburgh, Telluride, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, and Berlin.
In 2016, his feature-length documentary Shadow World — a penetrating exposé of the global arms trade — received the Best Documentary Feature award at both the Edinburgh International Film Festival (Scotland) and the 61st Valladolid International Film Festival (Spain).
Looking for Alfred, Grimonprez’s surreal meditation on identity, doubles, and cinematic memory, continues his exploration of film history and its cultural resonances. The work centre’s on the figure of Alfred Hitchcock, employing lookalikes and fragmented narratives to examine how authorship and mythology intertwine in visual culture.
With the aid of Hitchcock impersonators, Looking for Alfred weaves an unexpected narrative from Hitch’s fifty-year trail of cameo appearances in his own films. Shot amongst the atmospheric interiors of the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, and making the most of the distinctive architecture of this unique location, Grimonprez’s cinematic twists and turns echo the trademark manner of the Master of Suspense while at the same time radiating a quiet and beguiling surrealism reminiscent of that other great modernist maestro, René Magritte. Alongside the film itself, in which ‘Hitch’ is pursued by a number of shadowy doppelgängers, the project consists of a multiplicity of elements, including storyboard drawings and casting photographs, plus behind-the-scenes footage of screen tests in New York, London and Los Angeles that documents Grimonprez’s search for the perfect Hitchcock look-alike.
The film was co-produced by Film and Video Umbrella and Zapomatik, in association with Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels), The Photographers’ Gallery (London), and Anna Sanders Films (Paris). Looking for Alfred is made possible through the support of the Flemish Audiovisual Fund and Arts Council England. Additional contributions were provided by Deitch Projects, Riksutstillinger – The National Touring Exhibitions (Norway), Yvon Lambert Gallery, Media Space Inc., Victoria, and Productiehuis Rotterdam (Rotterdamse Schouwburg).
