In the exhibition Black Moon, Amie Siegel combines her study of cinematic devices with that of remaking and simultaneity. The centerpiece of the exhibition, Black Moon (2010) partially remakes Louis Malle’s 1975 film of the same title. Malle’s film focused on an ambiguous civil war in France as the background to a woman’s delusions. Siegel’s film depicts a troop of armed women trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic landscape of foreclosed and abandoned gated communities. The women warriors traverse the surreal topography, fighting an unknown enemy, driven on by distant gunfire and the bloody aftermaths of battles. A present-day science fiction film without dialogue, Black Moon juxtaposes still shots of the abandoned architecture of failed real estate speculation with scenes of the women quickly and wordlessly moving further into the desert, searching for safety. Ending with a twist, one woman comes across a fashion magazine featuring an eerie sequence of images of the troop that alters the outcome of the film.

Included in the exhibition are two photographs from Siegel’s series entitled Black Moon / Hole Punches (2010). When transferring a film negative to video, the technician punches holes or “black moons” into frames from the film. These hole punches appear as imperfect black voids in Siegel’s prints. Evocative of the medium of film, the somewhat violent cuts and light leaks resemble lunar phases or eclipses, while speaking to the unseen violence from Siegel’s film.

The third work, Black Moon / Mirrored Malle (2010), is a two-channel work that places an original interview with director Louis Malle about his film Black Moon against a shot-for-shot version in which Amie Siegel plays Malle. The interviews, one in French and one in English, shift words spoken by Malle in 1975 to the present-day. They mirror each other while shifting gender roles and the role of authorship over time. Not only has Siegel played the role of director, she altered the role of the characters in the film by casting solely women instead of men as soldiers.