Peggy and Fred in Hell (19842002) defies all categories. A protonarrative, it is a featurelength serial of film and video ‘episodes’ broadly drawn around the adventures of two small children living in a postapocalyptic landscape. Their language and behaviour reflect a television that was always on. The children pass through a dark but familiar world, as the forces of nature and decay work their destructive magic. It all adds up to the most unsettling feature since Eraserhead, a truly visionary excursion across the media landscape of our day.Peggy and Fred in Hell has been shown as a continuous workinprogress, but now Thornton is closing the book on this 15 year cycle of episodes and releasing it in the form of a feature. Because there can be no end to this saga, the final two minutes is a cathartic homage to the closing scene in Claire Denis’ Beau travail. Thornton is currently working on an installation entitled The 10,000 Hills of Language, drawing on her extensive and yet untapped archive of footage shot with the same two children.
