For many years I have been interested in the phenomenon of psychological alienation that haunts our modern world. I think it found its clearest expression in the theories of the German-American psychologist, Erich Fromm, who was able to put into plain words the sense of disconnectedness from life felt by many people today. Then one day, while looking in a book at some reproductions of several paintings by the American painter, Edward Hopper, it struck me that here was alienation expressed in pictorial form. I decided then to make a film that would attempt to analyse a number of Hopper paintings in terms of Fromm’s ideas on alienation.
Colin Wingfield