For many, many years I’ve been trying to gain access to a particular abandoned mental institution but haven’t had any idea how I might go about this. I know a few film folks who have worked at this location, but this hasn’t really helped my quest especially since many aren’t wild about returning.

My wish had finally come true this week though! A friend asked if I’d be interested in volunteering for an independent filming that he and his crew mates were working on and low and behold it would be at the PLACE!

YEAH!!!! I’ve never seen a film shoot before so it was all going to be new to me.

The place is fantastic, eerily beautiful and creatively inspirational -I can see why it’s used in film so often. Often it’s hard to tell what’s real decay and what’s a set! As for being of any help, initially, I must admit to feeling more of a nuisance than anything, and felt a little guilty too  just wandering off to take pictures while everyone else was busting their backs. I did as much as I could and in the end I think I may have been of some help or so I hope.

Someone had to watch the front desk to make sure no patients from the other buildings came wandering in. If they did, it’s super easy to get lost in the maze of the place. Since I have no apparent skills in a live action shoot I figured I might as well do it, and yes, someone did come wandering in, but they just left after I said they couldn’t go upstairs.

I ended up talking with the filming/location liaison for quite sometime finding out all sorts of history bits as well as what you can and can’t do on a shoot there. The main “no no’s” seem to be this: NO BOOZE, NO UNATTENDED FRONT AND BACK DOORS, NO WANDERING, NO PHOTOS and NO POSTING PHOTOS ON THE INTERNET. *gulp*

Our Hotel Continental Photo Album

This wasn’t always holy ground. This used to be the Interzone. This used to be the Hotel Continental. Everything seems to have faded like an old photograph, Tangiers itself worn down like it was made of salt. But everywhere there are reminders, diffused ghosts in a diffused twilight, refusing to leave, refusing to let go. We find a few of these phantoms upstairs , the cool chambers echoing with the dim voices of a time gone by. And the eery echoes cry out, “Who wants a drink? Would anyone like a thirteen year-old boy? Hey, let’s have some heroin!” Indeed, the voices bounce off the walls and chop you down just behind the knees. I wobbled a bit, anyway.

Presumably, the rooms have been empty since 1956 when Morocco gained independence and came under Muslim rule. The hotel sits partly on the old Medina – holy ground. Is it possible that armed soldiers stormed the lounge and ordered everyone to put their martinis down? I’d like to think so. Or maybe they dragged the mad reprobate Burroughs out by his debauched fingernails and he bitterly avowed that one day he’d write a story about it. Or about something. Could a blind-drunk Kerouac have tumbled down those winding wooden stairs? Probably.

Bowles called Tangiers a “Dream City” because of its literal and living depiction of the maddening labyrinthian dreamscape that resides in man’s collective cranium, haunting him since the invention of the word “dreamscape.” Or was Bowles being sarcastic? If there is a nightmare outside in the Medina, if there is madness in the Souk, then even more so that this should be the “Dream Upstairs.” Especially since it is completely empty and free of carpet salesman or robed men hissing, “Trust no one!”

But I trust it – what my eyes don’t even see – somewhere in the coffee-black shadows that plunge across the long rooms, everything feeling like a mystery, everything feeling a little dangerous. Faded glory turns to faded magic here, pretending to be secret, but it welcomes you inside, still possessing the power to enchant. There are birds flitting about an open courtyard that contains a dead fountain and the sound of their wings carries through every room, the flap-smack-snap of time standing still, the rustle of history – of everything lost, impossible, and far away.

-Rod Filbrandt

That’s right, in keeping with my summertime good mood I’m continuing my series of cemetery photos. I took these pics in St. Mark’s Cemetery, Salt Spring Island this year, but sadly, I wasn’t able to find out much about this pretty little place. All I found was a burial record, but I suppose it’s nice to know that many of the RIP-ers lived a long life, since many of the graveyards here in BC from this era seem to indicate otherwise.

It’s not that I want to end up in a graveyard prematurally, but I do enjoy looking around and taking pictures of them, therefore I thought it time to post a few of my own shots.

For my first online boneyard album, I decided Laeken Cemetery in Brussels, Belgium would be a good start. I’ve been to a few cemeteries since I was there in ‘92, but Laeken is still a favourite of mine.