The Winter Ghost

Berlin, Germany

Overview

The Winter Ghost is an experimental short dance film. Shot in Berlin during the last weeks of 2020, it follows a spirit who appears inside empty living spaces after their occupants have gone. Dancer and dramaturge Katja Vaghi inhabits the role. Moving inside an enormous fabric stocking, she navigates a vacant apartment, absorbing the traces and memories left behind by its former residents. But this time, she is not alone.

Production

The shoot came together fast. Katja had temporary access to an empty flat and we had days, not weeks, to work with it. We shot across two mornings in natural light, handheld, with no crew beyond the two of us. There was no script. Katja improvised her movement and I responded with the camera. My background in photojournalism made this approach feel natural. React, anticipate, follow. The constraint of working alone and fast forced a directness into the footage that a larger setup would have softened.

The apartment itself shaped the film. Drill holes in the living room walls. Sun tracking across bare floors. The geometry of empty rooms. The location did half the storytelling before Katja ever moved.

Post Production

The edit took time. The improvisational shoot produced hours of material with multiple ways to construct the narrative. The challenge was layering the story so that it built without announcing itself. The audience needed to feel the shift before they could name it.

Ashley Webb composed an original score from Bristol, working to an 18-minute rough assembly cut I sent him. He built the music from recordings I captured inside the apartment itself. Score and sound design became inseparable. Every creak, every ambient hum feeds into the musical texture. We spent weeks on Zoom calls debating the details.

The grade leans into the cold Berlin winter light. Cool tones dominate the early sequences. Warmth only enters when the ghost does.