We've been writing about Stefano Bessoni's Imago Mortis in these pages for a good long time now, drawn in first by the fact that Richard Stanley was credited for an early version of the script, then by the fact that Luis Alejandro Berdejo - whose shorts we are huge fans of and who is currently wrapping up his debut feature - wo-wrote the shooting script, and then by the fact that the first stills released showcased a deliciously gothic approach to horror. Well, things have been quiet for a good while now but the film is nearing the end of post production and Bessoni has just posted a series of stills and their corresponding storyboard sketches to his blog for comparison purposes and they're looking fantastically nasty.
They say that in the 1600s, long before the invention of photography, a scientist named Girolamo Fumagalli was obsessed with the idea of reproducing images. He discovered that by killing a victim and removing the victim’s eyeballs, it was possible to reproduce on paper the last image imprinted on that person’s retinas. He named this technique ‘thanatography’. Today, the same kind of gruesome ritual and abominable crime recurs within the walls of an international school of cinema.
