Chicago Underground Film Festival and Filmmakers Summit 2008

Ray Coombs and his mother are renting out the basement of their distant relative's suburban neocolonial home. Ray sneaks about and borrows their possessions, notably their video camera. He begins to make a movie using in-camera editing. Because he has never had exposure to unconventional cinema, Ray's influence is rooted in the normalized practice of commercial filmmaking. But due to his lack of skill, resources, and a grasp on how to portray 'psychological realism', a multiplicity arises - a new realism. The truth of the video situates itself in the multiplicity of relationships it sets in motion. A conflicted sense of character arises through Ray's conflicting moralities, beliefs, and politics. He yearns for certain ideals but is largely unaware of the socio-political ramifications of naming, human interaction, art-making...Spider House is a work of fiction focusing on how social and economic foundations intrinsically become evident in a narrative via voyeurism, linearity, the economics of production...