Pyramids/Skunk

Netherlands, January 29th 2006/January 29th 2007

Hamas have just won the Palestinian elections and a chocolate bar in a Rotterdam hotel room eventually reminds the filmmaker that there are more important things going on in the world outside. Exactly one year later he returns to the same city and checks in at a very different hotel. Pyramids/Skunk is a double episode in the Hotel Diaries series, a collection of video recordings made in the world’s hotel rooms, which relate personal experiences and reflections to contemporary conflicts in the Middle East.

“The best piece in Program 2 is John Smith's Pyramids/Skunk (Hotel Diaries 5). Smith's visual and voice-over comments on the minute details of two hotel rooms have a wry self-indulgence that sets up his observations on the real-world horrors in Palestine.”

— Fred Camper, Chicago Reader (2007)

This title is also available on Hotel Diaries: John Smith.