THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT

In October 1994, three students ventured into the woods around the town of Burkittsville, Maryland, to film a documentary about the legend of the Blair Witch. Their names: Heather Donahue, the director and instigator of the project, Joshua Leonard, the camera technician, and Michael Williams, the sound technician. After conducting and filming various interviews in the town, on October 21st, the three ventured into the forest. Strange events, distant children's voices, footsteps, accompanied their nights. These presences openly manifested themselves, signaling their presence with ritual objects left near the young people's campsite. Strange piles of stones, small bundles of tree branches, strange humanoid figures formed with tree branches and hung from them. Soon, what was supposed to be a simple adventure in the woods turned into a nightmare... «The Blair Witch Project» is probably the film with the highest net profit in the history of cinema. Upon its release, it was the box office phenomenon: a small film with a minuscule budget (22,000 dollars), almost entirely shot with a Video8 camera by two debutant directors that grossed as much as the blockbuster «Star Wars Episode I» by Lucas, generating a true cultural phenomenon. It seems incredible... and yet, it happened! The reason for such success lies in the clever promotional campaign carried out by the distributors and started long before the film's existence was known. A website told the mysterious story of three young filmmakers who disappeared without a trace in the forest of Burkitsville, Maryland, while searching for the Blair Witch, who, since the 17th century, is said to wander the forest terrifying unlucky passersby. A few months later, the same website informed that in a cabin, some videotapes containing the material filmed by the directors before their disappearance had been found. At the parents' request, the material would be released in cinemas with the hope that this would help provide clues to their whereabouts... Word of mouth was incredible, and people rushed to the theaters where the film was being shown, convinced they were seeing a shocking documentary about the last hours of the three protagonists' lives. Fainting spells in the theaters and real cases of mass hysteria followed. It is difficult to define «The Blair Witch Project» as just a film, just as it is impossible to define it as a documentary. Given that it has nothing real. A simple story told in an even simpler style. All the shots are made by the protagonists themselves using two handheld cameras. A sixteen-millimeter black-and-white camera, initially intended for the «objective narrative» of the documentary, and a small eight-millimeter color video camera intended to capture the group's private and personal moments. The complete absence of cinematic references and the importance given to the sense of hearing are two important characteristics of the work. In «The Blair Witch Project», everything happens outside any genre narrative scheme, little or nothing is shown. Several times the screen is darkened, completely black. Only the panting voices of the protagonists, or those in the distance of children crying desperately in the night, are heard. Despite being «cinema», the images count for little or nothing. It is the people's stories, the confused noises of the night forest, the crying of the children in the dark, Joshua's heart-wrenching screams that build the image of fear. The attempt to scare with a horror «suggested» but never revealed succeeds perfectly. The unknown is more emotionally suggestive than the known, the invisible of the visible. Thus, by acting on the primordial mechanisms of fear, «The Blair Witch Project» builds a strongly emotional and engaging horror product. Provided you are willing to play along. Like all legends, the one built around the Blair Witch requires, to work, that someone believes it. «The Blair Witch Project» is a film that cannot leave one indifferent (... and this is already, in its own way, a merit): either you hate it or you love it, you decide which category of viewers you fall into...