The Essential Frame: Austrian Independent Film 1955-2003

Date: 31 May 2003 | Season: Essential Frame

THE ESSENTIAL FRAME: AUSTRIAN INDEPENDENT FILM 1955-2003
31 May—1 June 2003
London Film School

The Essential Frame is a two-day intensive programme of screenings and talks reflecting on the history and the present situation of independent filmmaking in Austria. The six sessions will provide a concise survey of those artists who chose to work specifically with film, and two of the most important figures active in the movement will appear in person to talk about their work.

The event begins with a ‘remote lecture’ prepared by media-artist Valie Export, a pioneer of film performance and one of the most influential artists of recent decades. Contemporary filmmakers Martin Arnold and Peter Tscherkassky will present and discuss selections of their films. The screening programme includes a cycle of films by Dietmar Brehm plus works by Peter Kubelka, Marc Adrian, Kurt Kren, Peter Weibel, Gustav Deutsch, Linda Christanell, Lisl Ponger, and many others.

Perhaps more than any other national independent or avant-garde cinema, Austrian filmmakers have paid particular and precise attention to The Frame – and it goes two ways – into the frame (and the space between two adjacent frames) as the essential component of film (and apparent motion), and outwards, testing the limits of the frame, pushing the boundaries of expanded cinema and film actions.

This concentrated weekend focuses on those films in which the material and mechanics of cinema are essential to the form and content of the final work. It is not all-inclusive and there are some notable omissions: it does not feature the works made in documenting the performances of the Viennese Actionists, the exploratory early video works by Export, Weibel and others, or the thriving digital video scene of contemporary Vienna. There is plenty more out there to be discovered, but an essential framework is here.

The Essential Frame is curated by Mark Webber for the Austrian Cultural Forum, London. The event in London will be followed by a two-programme UK tour.

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Valie Export. Expanded Cinema: Remote Lecture

Date: 31 May 2003 | Season: Essential Frame

VALIE EXPORT. EXPANDED CINEMA: REMOTE LECTURE
Saturday 31 May 2003, at 3pm
London Film School

Using film, photography, video, television and live action, Valie Export has pursued a complex feminist critique of the social and political body. As one of the world’s foremost performance and multi-media artists, she confronts erotic hypocrisy, invoking a new image of ‘womankind’. With her pioneering work in the field of expanded cinema and installation art, technology, semantics and notions of reality are scrutinised through space and time.

Valie Export is unable to come to London at the present time, but has prepared a special ‘remote lecture’ which will include documentation of performances, descriptions of projection events and a selection of short films.

Valie Export, Interrupted Line, 1971-72, 3 min
Valie Export, Mann & Frau & Animal, 1970-73, 8 min
Valie Export, … Remote … Remote …, 1973, 10 min
Valie Export, Syntagma, 1984, 18 min

PROGRAMME NOTES

Early History

Date: 31 May 2003 | Season: Essential Frame

EARLY HISTORY
Saturday 31 May 2003, at 5pm
London Film School

The origins of the movement, which rapidly matured into an authoritative investigation of the material of film and the formal aspects of its physical and intellectual application.

Peter Kubelka, Mosaik Im Vertrauen, 1955, 16 min
Peter Kubelka, Schwechater, 1958, 2 x 1 min
Ernst Schmidt Jr., Filmreste, 1966, 10 min
Kurt Kren, 20/68 Schatzi, 1968, 3 min
Kurt Kren, 13/67 Sinus ß, 1967, 6 min
Hans Scheugl, Hernals, 1967, 11 min
Peter Weibel, Fingerprint, 1968, 2 min
Marc Adrian, Text 1, 1963, 3 min
Marc Adrian, Black Movie, 1957, 3 min
Moucle Blackout, Die Geburt der Venus, 1970-72, 5 min

PROGRAMME NOTES

Dietmar Brehm. Schwarzer Garten.

Date: 31 May 2003 | Season: Essential Frame

DIETMAR BREHM. SCHWARZER GARTEN.
Saturday 31 May 2003, at 8pm
London Film School

The six films in the “Black Garden” cycle use found and photographed footage from a variety of sources including pornography, ethnographic, medical and scientific materials, to present an unsettling reflection of sexuality and violence. Only the first part, The Murder Mystery, is in subdued colour. On the soundtrack a foghorn warns of rough tides ahead and the storm begins. For nearly two hours we are taken on a strange trip through grainy black and white footage, often hard to decipher, and perhaps necessarily so. Out of Brehm’s technique of re-filming 8mm material at different speeds, emerges the ‘pumping screen’, a pulsing, gentle flicker that mediates our view, sometimes bleaching out the image. The seemingly disconnected soundtrack adds a further strange and unnerving element to the experience. Something is happening and you don’t know what it is.

Dietmar Brehm, The Murder Mystery (2nd Version), 1987/92, 18 min
Dietmar Brehm, Blicklust, 1992, 18 min
Dietmar Brehm, Party, 1995, 18 min
Dietmar Brehm, Macumba, 1995, 18 min
Dietmar Brehm, Korridor, 1998, 18 min
Dietmar Brehm, Organics, 1998/99, 18 min

“Even though the six films function perfectly well as individual works, I always had the feeling of filming a single work. The source of inspiration was much of the historical Roman literature I read. From this sprang the motivation for the sombre-sexual treatment of the pumping screen body portrayals. In the end we are all living corpses and very soon dead again.” (Dietmar Brehm)

PROGRAMME NOTES

Martin Arnold. The Interrupted Image.

Date: 1 June 2003 | Season: Essential Frame

MARTIN ARNOLD. THE INTERRUPTED IMAGE.
Sunday 1 June 2003, at 3pm
London Film School

Martin Arnold will discuss his works including the well-known analytical trilogy plus three seldom screened short films and excerpts from his new digital video installation Deanimated: The Invisible Ghost, which was recently premiered at Kunsthalle Wien.

Martin Arnold, Remise, 1994, 1 min
Martin Arnold, Jesus Walking on Screen, 1993, 1 min
Martin Arnold, Don’t – Der Österreichfilm, 1996, 3 min
Martin Arnold, Deanimated: The Invisible Ghost, 2002, 56 min (excerpt)
Martin Arnold, pièce touchée, 1989, 16 min
Martin Arnold, passage à l’acte, 1993, 12 min
Martin Arnold, Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy, 1998, 15 min

“Martin Arnold’s films are merciless investigations of the historic and the present. They attempt to find within what has become strange through historical distance, something of our own, and to turn it into something else again. They ask that fundamental question regarding the nature of man and all things within a technological world which, according to Heidegger, embodies “utter transparency and, at the same time, the deepest obscurity”.” —Thomas Miessgang, in the exhibition catalogue Martin Arnold: Deanimated, Springer / Kunsthalle Wien, 2002

PROGRAMME NOTES

Recent History

Date: 1 June 2003 | Season: Essential Frame

RECENT HISTORY
Sunday 1 June 2003, at 5pm
London Film School

A selection of recent work demonstrating a more poetic and contemplative cinema. Through their awareness of the past and an engagement with the pioneering work of the 1950s and 1960s, these contemporary artists have developed original and dynamic approaches to the medium.

Gustav Deutsch, Tradition ist die Weitergabe des Feuers und nicht die Anbetung der Asche, 1999, 1 min
Siegfried A. Fruhauf, La Sortie, 1999, 6 min
Linda Christanell, Moving Picture, 1995, 11 min
Kurt Kren, 31/75 Asyl, 1975, 9 min
Kerstin Cmelka, Et In Arcadia Ego, 2000, 3 min
Lisl Ponger, Semiotic Ghosts, 1990, 17 min
Bernhard Schreiner, Dian, Paito, 2001, 6 min
Kathrin Resetarits, Ägypten, 1996, 10 min
Thomas Draschan & Stella Friedrichs, To the Happy Few, 2003, 5 min
Alexander Curtis, Opus 7, 1993, 4 min

PROGRAMME NOTES

Peter Tscherkassky. From Super-8 to Scope.

Date: 1 June 2003 | Season: Essential Frame

PETER TSCHERKASSKY. FROM SUPER-8 TO SCOPE.
Sunday 1 June 2003, at 8pm
London Film School

Peter Tscherkassky will introduce a selection of his film work, explaining the methods and theories behind his process driven filmmaking.

Peter Tscherkassky, tabula rasa, 1987/89, 17 min
Peter Tscherkassky, Parallel Space: Inter-View, 1992, 18 min
Peter Tscherkassky, L’Arrivée, 1998, 2 min
Peter Tscherkassky, Outer Space, 1999, 10 min
Peter Tscherkassky, Dream Work, 2001, 12 min
Peter Tscherkassky, Happy End, 1996, 11 min

“In Tscherkassky’s hands the ‘industrial’ 35mm film became a body with visual and audio qualities which allows itself to be shaped and formed and expanded with a truly voluptuous desire. The opportunities specific to the material are not at all obsolete, nor have they been fully exploited, and they can be equally dramatic as the genre films and illusions for which the 35mm strip normally serves as an ‘unconscious’ vehicle.” (Alexander Horwarth)

PROGRAMME NOTES

The Essential Frame: UK Tour

Date: 3 June 2003 | Season: Essential Frame

THE ESSENTIAL FRAME: AUSTRIAN INDEPENDENT FILM 1955-2003 (CONCISE EDITION)
3 June—9 July 2003
UK Touring Programme

The Essential Frame is a brief introduction to Austrian independent filmmaking, focusing on those artists for whom the material and mechanics of cinema are fundamental to the form and content of their work.

Perhaps more than any other national avant-garde cinema, the Austrian filmmakers have paid particular and precise attention to the frame – and it goes two ways – into the frame (and the space between two adjacent frames) as the essential component of film (and apparent motion), and outwards, testing the limits of the frame, pushing the boundaries of expanded cinema and film actions.

From the personal to the universal and from the sublime to the explicit, many of the films extend Austria’s history of radicalism in painting, architecture, literature, music and philosophy. These two programmes include the early pioneers such as Peter Kubelka, Kurt Kren, Marc Adrian, Valie Export and Moucle Blackout, and contemporary artists including Martin Arnold, Dietmar Brehm, Lisl Ponger and Peter Tscherkassky.

June 3/4 – Norwich School of Art & Design
June 9/10 – Sheffield Showroom
June 12/15 – Brighton Cinematheque
June 17/18 – Edinburgh Filmhouse
June 23/24 – Newcastle Cineside
June 28/30 – Bristol Watershed
July 8/9 – Liverpool FACT Centre

The Essential Frame is curated by Mark Webber for the Austrian Cultural Forum, London


Essential Frame 1: Early History

Date: 3 June 2003 | Season: Essential Frame

THE ESSENTIAL FRAME: EARLY HISTORY
3 June—8 July 2003
The Essential Frame UK Tour: Programme 1

The origins of the movement, which rapidly matured into an authoritative investigation of the material of film and the formal aspects of its physical and intellectual application.

Peter Kubelka, Unsere Afrikareise, 1966, 13 min
Peter Kubelka, Schwechater, 1958, 2 x 1 min

Ernst Schmidt Jr., Filmreste, 1966, 10 min
Kurt Kren, 20/68 Schatzi, 1968, 3 min
Kurt Kren, 13/67 Sinus ß, 1967, 6 min
Hans Scheugl, Hernals, 1967, 11 min
Marc Adrian, Text 1, 1963, 3 min
Moucle Blackout, Die Geburt der Venus, 1970-72, 5 min
Valie Export, Mann & Frau & Animal, 1970-73, 8 min
Valie Export, Syntagma, 1984, 18 min

PROGRAMME NOTES


Essential Frame 2: Recent History

Date: 3 June 2003 | Season: Essential Frame

THE ESSENTIAL FRAME: RECENT HISTORY
4 June—9 July 2003
The Essential Frame UK Tour: Programme 2

A selection of recent work demonstrating a more poetic and contemplative cinema. Through their awareness of the past and an engagement with the pioneering work of the 50s and 60s, these contemporary artists have developed original and dynamic approaches to the medium.

Gustav Deutsch, Tradition ist die Weitergabe des Feuers und nicht die Anbetung der Asche, 1999, 1 min
Dietmar Brehm, Party, 1995, 18 min
Peter Tscherkassky, Parallel Space: Inter-View, 1992, 18 min
Martin Arnold, Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy, 1998, 15 min
Lisl Ponger, Semiotic Ghosts, 1990, 17 min
Kathrin Resetarits, Ägypten, 1996, 10 min
Thomas Draschan & Stella Friedrichs, To the Happy Few, 2003, 5 min
Alexander Curtis, Opus 7, 1993, 4 min

PROGRAMME NOTES