A reverse re-edit of the 1993 Bill Murray comedy 'Groundhog Day'. This version is intended to form one half of a palindromic double bill screening of the film, alongside the regular version.

Groundhog Day falls each year on the 2nd February. This year, 2020, that date is infact a palindrome - 02.02.2020 - reading the same forwards as it does backwards. To celebrate the special significance of this years Groundhog Day, I have re-edited the original film in reverse, from finish to start, scene by scene, and in many cases, shot by shot. This new version thus tells the same story, but backwards, altering Phil's trajectory from redemption to impenitance. In doing so, new meanings are created, as the flow of conversations are re-configured, and internal logic of phil's actions is up-ended.

The resulting re-edit is intended to be shown as part of a Double Bill screening with he original film, so that as a pair, the experience for the audience is the same backwards or forwards. Luckily, 2022 offers a second chance to stage such a screening, as the date can also be expressed as a palindrome - 2.2.22.

This film also marks the third time in four years that I have made a piece of work to celebrate Groundhog Day, follwing from my 24 hour marathon screening with film programmer Chris Brown in 2016, and my recursive analogue remix in 2019 with AV artist Raz Ullah. I am pretty sure it won't be my last. If there is one thing that I believe Groundhog Day tells us, it is that by revisiting the same work again and again, we can find new ways to perceive the situation and ourselves, new opportunities to explore. There is no repetition, only creation. I will finish with this Groundhog Haiku that I wrote, that can be looped and reversed:

in Punxatawny
Phil prophesises winter
as he wakes again