Wisconsin Death Trip

Description

This half-film, half-documentary is the surreal account of small town life gone seriously awry at the turn of the last century. In the 1890s, the small Wisconsin town of Black River Falls was subject to a bizarre series of disasters and strange, gruesome events, including a diphtheria epidemic, attacks by a serial arsonist, a crazed lunatic taking 26 people hostage in the local church and the murder of several newborn infants to name but a few. In the early 1970s, Michael Lesy discovered an almost unbelievable archive of old photographs from Black River Falls, prompting him to further research which culminated in his 1973 book ‘Wisconsin Death Trip’, on which this film is based. The film intersperses these old photographs (along with contemporary newspaper articles and records from the town’s Asylum for the Insane) with contemporary footage of the town and silent recreations of the events by actors, accompanied by a hypnotic score by DJ Shadow.