Date: 11 October 2012 | Season: London Film Festival 2012 | Tags: London Film Festival, Peter Kubelka
PETER KUBELKA: THE ESSENCE OF CINEMA
Thursday 11 October 2012, at 6pm
London ICA Cinema 1
The seven films made by Peter Kubelka between 1955 and 2003 are an extraordinary demonstration of cinematic possibilities. In the ‘metric’ films Adebar, Schwechater and Arnulf Rainer, each individual element is precisely placed in relation to each other and the whole, resulting in a rhythmic viewing experience that articulates his assertion that ‘film is not movement’. The ‘metaphoric’ works Mosaik im Vertrauen, Unsere Afrikareise, Pause! and Dichtung und Wahrheit explore ways in which meaning can be constructed by the juxtaposition of images and sound. Astounding at first sight, our understanding of these films deepens with repeated viewings.
‘Kubelka’s cinema is like a piece of crystal, or some other object of nature: It doesn’t look like it was produced by man; one could easily conceive that it was picked up from among the organic treasures of nature.’ (Jonas Mekas)
Peter Kubelka, Mosaik im Vertrauen, 1955, 17 min
Peter Kubelka, Adebar, Austria, 1957, 2 min
Peter Kubelka, Schwechater, Austria, 1958, 1 min
Peter Kubelka, Arnulf Rainer, Austria, 1960, 6 min
Peter Kubelka, Unsere Afrikareise, Austria, 1966, 13 min
Peter Kubelka, Pause!, Austria, 1977, 12 min
Peter Kubelka, Dichtung und Wahrheit, Austria, 2003, 13 min
Peter Kubelka will present his new work Monument Film at BFI Southbank on Sunday 21 October at 2pm. The Monument Film installation is on display at BFI Southbank for the duration of the Festival. Martina Kudlácek’s documentary Fragments of Kubelka screens at the ICA on Saturday 13 October at 1pm.
PROGRAMME NOTES
PETER KUBELKA: THE ESSENCE OF CINEMA
Thursday 11 October 2012, at 6pm
London ICA Cinema 1
MOSAIK IM VERTRAUEN
Peter Kubelka, Austria, 1955, 35mm, b/w & colour, sound, 17 min
Kubelka’s motives for making the film lie in his belief that commercial films do not fully exploit cinematic possibilities. He declares that the place of the plot and its ostensibly disparate scenes is the screen, and the time shall be any time at which the film is shown. (Alfred Schmeller)
ADEBAR
Peter Kubelka, Austria, 1957, 35mm, b/w, sound, 2 min
Here, at last, is a filmmaker’s ear that creates in contrapuntal accord with his eye in the making. If the projection of Adebar is perfectly synced, the experience is an indescribably new one for any with eyes and ears to see/hear it. (Stan Brakhage)
SCHWECHATER
Peter Kubelka, Austria, 1958, 35mm, b/w & colour, sound, 1 min
Kubelka’s achievement is that he has taken Soviet montage one step further. While Eisenstein used shots as the basic units and edited them together in a pattern to make meanings, Kubelka has gone back to the individual still frame as the essence of cinema. (Fred Camper)
ARNULF RAINER
Peter Kubelka, Austria, 1960, 35mm, b/w, sound, 6 min
Arnulf Rainer is an architecture built in time by cinema. It uses only the four essential elements of the medium: light, darkness, sound and silence. (Peter Kubelka)
UNSERE AFRIKAREISE
Peter Kubelka, Austria, 1966, 16mm, colour, sound, 13 min
Unsere Afrikareise is about the richest, most articulate, and most compressed film I have ever seen. Kubelka’s film is one of the cinema’s few masterpieces and a work of such great perfection that it forces one to re-evaluate everything that one knew about cinema. The incredible artistry of this man, his incredible patience, his methods of working, and the beauty of his accomplishment, makes the rest of us look like amateurs. (Jonas Mekas)
PAUSE!
Peter Kubelka, Austria, 1977, 16mm, colour, sound, 12 min
Arnulf Rainer’s face art, which constitutes the source of imagery of Pause!, is a chapter of modern art in itself. Kubelka had to consume and to transcend not only Arnulf Rainer but also to transcend the entire genre of contemporary art known as face art. Both Rainer and Art disintegrated and became molecules, frames of movement and expression, material at the disposal of the Muse of Cinema. Pause! is an ecstatic work. (Jonas Mekas)
DICHTUNG UND WAHRHEIT
Peter Kubelka, Austria, 2003, 35mm, colour, silent, 13 min
Dichtung und Wahrheit features 12 stories; 12 sequences, each composed of one shot that is repeated in three, or five, or a dozen variations. Each take captures a movement from a stasis to motion and back again. For Kubelka, the repetition of physical movement – as in dance, as in film, as in life – is the fundamental law of the universe, from which even civilization’s most complex systems derive. (Alexander Horwath)
Back to top
