Spectres of the Spectrum (1999)
By Craig Baldwin
Spectres of the Spectrum is a feature-length 16mm film utilizing old 'kinescopes' (filmed records of early TV broadcasts before the advent of videotape, mostly from the late Fifties' educational show called 'Science in Action') to create an eerie, haunted "media-archaeology" zone for a sci-fi time-travel tale, wherein live-action actors search for a hidden electromagnetic secret to save the planet from a futuristic war-machine, inspired by HAARP the High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. (Though fictionalized for Baldwin's film, HAARP is, in fact, a very real phenomenon. On the surface, it is a data-gathering tool to explore the Aurora Borealis in detail. But in fact, HAARP doubles as one of the most sophisticated components of the Star Wars weapons arsenal, a particle beam device that can be accurately targeted on specific sites in the ionosphere. Set in the year 2007 in the blighted desert outpost of Las Vegas, a young telepathic woman ("BooBoo") scavenges for survival on an old bombing range with her father ("Yogi") who is holed up in a cinder-block pirate-TV station, broadcasting rambling diatribes on the impending global electromagnetic 'Pulse'. A solar eclipse giv…
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