World Famous Gopher Hole Museum
Directed by Doug Nayler and Chelsea McMullan2015 20m
In a dark room seventy pairs of beady eyes stare back at you from behind illuminated glass boxes. Each a pair of tiny gopher eyes populating the dioramas of the Torrington Gopher Hole Museum. The museum opened in 1996, a double wide trailer in rural Torrington, AB (pop. 200) presenting taxidermized gophers dressed up as members of the community arranged in elaborate dioramas of daily life. World Famous Gopher Hole Museum is a short documentary that turns its lens on the town, the museum, and the people who live in both worlds. Invoking the Pyramids of Egypt, the film questions the human desire for legacy in the face of mortality. This struggle is visually represented through the Gopher Hole Museum, as the gophers are destroyed, taxodermied, and recast into an idealized version of the country town of Torrington.
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