The Inspection House (Training for the Family in How to Act) (2012)

The Prodigal son returns to his family home, a strange ingrown world deep inside the forest. He intends to train his relations to become actors according to his method. As the program unfolds his obfuscation of the line between fantasy and reality rises with his obsession with the "Hero's Quest". This blackly comic look at the absurdist nature of enforcement of prescribed roles and patterns within the family and society employs the structural principles of the hero story as a means to facilitate experimentation with strategies for self-governance and improvisation. This exploration is woven into the subject of the film and its methodology. The co-operative worked with and against Oedipal narratives to devise reflexive film making experiments concerned with examining the advantages and potentials, problems and paradoxes of living and working in a group. The characters and story were developed over the course of four years through workshops, short films and performances. Initially Pawlak made films in which she played all the family herself, when others joined the co-operative they also contributed to the formation of each character. Latex masks were employed to allow for each actor to play each family member, thus no individual owned a single role.