Monster Dialectics is an experimental essay film made with archival- and original material. It explores how the personal trauma that architect Frank Lloyd Wright ingrained in his 1920’s LA buildings resurfaces through the many Hollywood films and shows that utilize the architecture as set design and dramatic device.


The film explores the relationship between Frank Lloyd Wright’s Mayan Revival buildings in Los Angeles and their presence in Hollywood cinema and TV. It draws on the thesis that the buildings embody Wright’s emotional wounds and served as an outlet for his repressed feelings after his lover “Mamah” and her children were brutally murdered.

This backstory is framed by ideas coined by the Freudian art historian Aby Warburg about how trauma manifests with a reappearing pathos and gesture throughout the Western canon of art. The film takes its title from Warburg’s term of choice for repressed emotions; ”the monster". It conveys how the real world trauma of Wright’s houses resonates with the characters and narratives that inhabited them throughout the last 90 years of Hollywood cinema.

In their life as locations and film sets the buildings have played anything in between haunted house, Yakuza mob mansion, and AI laboratory. “Monster Dialectics” features a wide range of clips appropriated from films such as: Female (1933), The Day of the Locust (1974), Blade Runner (1982), Game of Thrones (2011-19) and West World (2016-) — in combination with original material shot at Wright’s Hollyhock- and Ennis Houses in Los Angeles.

The real vs. fictional qualities of the buildings are addressed through a screenplay that synthesizes the architect's trauma with ideas coined by Warburg and references to characters and narratives in the source films.

Directed and produced by Emanuel Röhss

Cinematography by Mathew Doyle and Meredith Leckey

Voice over by Brennan Hill

Music by Maxwell Sterling

Mix by Dusk Bennett

Runtime: 12:01

H264, stereo sound