Dave Dyment: Watching Night of the Living Dead

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Dave Dyment, "Watching Night of the Living Dead," 2018

Opening Reception: June 29, 2018, 5:00–8:00 PM

Watching Night of the Living Dead reanimates the 1968 George Romero classic entirely using footage of characters from other films and television series watching the movie on TV or at the cinema. Originally titled Night of the Flesh Eaters, the producers re-branded it as Night of the Living Dead, at the last minute, to avoid confusion with a similarly titled horror film. The title card was hastily replaced and the copyright symbol was accidentally omitted. This minor clerical error caused the film to immediately fall into public domain.

Night of the Living Dead is ground-zero for the contemporary zombie, the last new mythology to be publicly owned. Countless comic books, novels, television series and feature films have used variations on Romero’s walking dead monsters. In addition to the myriad unauthorized sequels and reproductions, the film’s public domain status allows other filmmakers to include clips in their own projects, eliminating the costs and administrative headaches of securing permission to use copyrighted materials.

Watching Night of the Living Dead collects these scenes and arranges them sequentially along a bed track of the original. The characters watching television will sometimes serve as surrogate zombies, staring blankly at the horror unfolding on their sets, but also mirror the protagonists in the original, where most of the plot exposition is delivered via a television news reader.