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Backwards Films

The method

How the museum works

Five steps between a clip somebody posted and a plaque on a wall. Two of them are built.

Where a step below describes something that does not exist yet, it says so in the step. Nothing on this page describes a feature as though it were running.

Step by step

  1. V

    A work is found

    Every work here is somebody else’s: a short clip its creator already published somewhere public, which happens to be far stranger played the wrong way round.

    The route for suggesting one is a message to the museum. There is no nomination form on this site.

  2. IV

    It is embedded, not copied

    The rule this museum is built to is that a work is shown by embedding it from wherever its creator posted it, credited and linked back. Nothing is re-hosted here.

    No work has been hung under that rule yet, so every frame on this site is currently empty and says so.

  3. III

    It gets a plaque

    A hung work carries an engraved plaque: which wing it belongs to, and two lines of curator — what was filmed forward, and what the reversal turns it into.

    The plaques are built. They render whatever the register holds, and nothing when it holds nothing. They print no running time: the register holds proposals, and a duration against an unmade film is not a measurement.

  4. II

    Two works go head to head

    The museum’s one game is a duel: two reversals side by side and a single question — which of these is better. The answer is meant to be settled by visitors, weekly.

    The duel is not running. There is no vote writer behind it, so a vote button would record nothing, and there is not one anywhere on this site.

  5. I

    You wander

    Walk the whole strip, read the register as an index, or take one wing at a time. Nothing is gated and nothing is metered.

    Built. No account, no paywall, no checkout.

Where to start

Walk the stripThe six wingsCurator’s note