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Broadcast Signal Intrusion
Watching Jacob Gentry’s
Broadcast Signal Intrusion is similar to following yarn pulled across a bulletin board. From one clue to another, the film shoots through the mystery of an unsettling pirate broadcast – pushing pins in different places where answers might be. Are those answers real?
Maybe, but the truth gets murky in rabbit holes. But the paranoia and obsession on display from James (Harry Shum Jr.), a video archivist caught up in the film’s conspiracy, is clear.
The film is set in 1999-era Chicago, with much of period-setting coming from the outdated tech decorating James’ apartment and life. He’s stuck rewinding through the past – transferring tapes to CD for work with his wife’s death a recurring VCR whine underneath. Harry Shum Jr. plays the character with a haunted air, grief repressed into the hardest of emotional walls to protect himself. That is, until he becomes consumed with finding the creator of a series of signal inte
Broadcast Signal Intrusion, one of this year’s SXSW Midnighters (Image courtesy of Queensbury Pictures)
Before there was hacking, there were broadcast signal intrusions: strange incidents where people would hijack TV signals and insert strange clips or weird rantings. Their enduring mystery powers
Broadcast Signal Intrusion, the SXSW Midnighter directed by Jacob Gentry.
In the period techno-horror, video archivist and camera expert James (Harry Shum Jr.) becomes intrigued, fascinated, and finally obsessed with two of these bizarre transmissions and his belief that they are connected to a trauma that has haunted him.
Before the world debut, we chatted with Gentry about what drew him to this topic, and the films that influenced him in creating this tale of cable access madness.