I stumbled on Mark Hogencamp while reading one of my favourite film news sites: Twitchfilm.net. I hadn't heard anything about Hogencamp before until the write up about the film of his work premiering at SXSW:

Meet Mark Hogancamp. In April of 2000, Mark was attacked outside a bar in New York State and literally beaten to death by a group of five men. Though Mark would be revived by paramedics he would spend nine days in a coma and awake brain damaged and so badly battered that his own mother didn't even recognize him. The beating was so severe that his entire memory was in tatters.

Okay, that got me.

Hogencamp makes films and photographs dioramas he creates using Barbie dolls and scale WWII props to make up a world he calls MARWENCOL, a combination of his name and the names of two women in his life. Because he doesn't remember a lot, he has created this fantasy world to create his own stories.

PHOTO THEORY from marwencol on Vimeo.