Reviews 1 — Ken McMullen

Ghost Dance (1983)

''I think cinema, when it's not boring, is the art of letting ghosts come back.''

— Jacques Derrida

Through the experiences of two women in Paris and London, Ghost Dance offers a stunning analysis of the complexity of our conceptions of ghosts, memory and the past. It is an adventure film strongly influenced by the work of Jacques Rivette and Jean Luc Godard but with a unique intellectual and artistic discourse of its own and it is this that tempts the ghosts to appear, for Ghost Dance is permeated with all kinds of phantomatic presence.

“''GHOST DANCE,'' an experimental film by the British director Ken McMullen, is notable for its very leisurely pace, its occasional bizarre humor, its near-perfect opacity and the presence of two striking individuals: Jacques Derrida, the French linguistic philosopher, and Pascale Ogier, the late young actress whose doleful, mature face and mischievous manner held forth such great promise of a remarkable screen career. ''Ghost Dance,'' which mixes these two, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Rivette and a couple of exceedingly weird supporting players”

— New York Times, 1984

The film focuses on philosopher Jacques Derrida who considers ghosts to be the memory of something which has never been present. This theory is explored in the film.

“Ghosts are often referred to as real or of one’s imagination, and Ghost Dance delves into this phenomenon in a unique way that has not been done before. There seems to be no beginning, middle, or end to the story, and indeed that is precisely what this film highlights: memories that are never in the present.”

— Melissa Rose Cusano

“To Derrida, the ghosts are ideas, which are surprisingly adaptable and unconsciously transmittable. Like viruses, they live forever unless they are killed. Ghost Dance is the film equivalent of an extended caffeine trip with Derrida.”

— Chai Walla, 2018

Through the experiences of two women in Paris and London, Ghost Dance offers a stunning analysis of the complexity of our conceptions of ghosts memory and the past.