Marwencol

Ten years ago, Mark Hogancamp was attacked by five men in the parking lot of a Kingston, New York bar. The assault left the ex-navy man, carpenter, and showroom designer in a coma with brain damage that initially made it impossible for him to function. Determined “not to let those five guys win,” Hogancamp revisited his childhood hobbies of collecting toy soldiers and building painted models to help him regain both his hand-eye coordination and his sanity. In his backyard, he constructed “Marwencol,” a fictional Belgian World War II town built to one-sixth scale, and populated it with dolls representing stand-ins for himself, his friends, and his family. Finally, he began photographing staged events ranging from battles between occupying German and American forces to catfights in the town bar. Completely immersed in his characters, Mark enacts brutal scenes of retaliation on the five SS dolls responsible for torturing his Captain “Hogie” Hogancamp alter ego. When Mark's photos are discovered by a New York gallery, he has to decide whether to remain inside the fantasy world of MARWENCOL or re-enter the real one. Filmmaker Jeff Malmberg chronicles the surprising life and work of this amiable, yet unlikely, artist. – B.B.