In his work as a filmmaker, the Austrian Gustav Deutsch has concentrated for many years on creating a growing body of work on the aura and impact of cinema. A small selection from his oeuvre will be screened on March 12:

»Film/spricht/viele/Sprachen« [Film/speaks/many/languages], A 1995 1 min

A unified story was [re-] constructed from 21 of a total of 39 fragments of an Indian film. The story consists of four parts, each of which is dedicated to one of the four venues described in the found pieces of film. These found strips have been preserved with all the damage and dirt on them and are now presented on screen in their full width with the sound track and side perforation.

»Film ist. (7 – 12)« [Film is (7 – 12)], A 2002, 93 min

»Film is. (7 – 12)« presents in six chapters moving images from the first three decades of a medium that at the time was still silent. Gustav Deutsch employs scarcely known, often awe-inspiring images that have been banished from the screen into film museum vaults. »Film is. (7-12)« does not just go far beyond the vast canon of classic silent films, it actually enables one to see documentary, fictitious, avant-garde and conservative cinema in a new light, and as such in a way, film itself.

»Film ist. (1 - 6)« [Film is (1 – 6)], A 1998, 60 min

»Film is. (1 – 6)« is made up almost completely of excerpts from already existing scientific films. These are films about the flight of pigeons, stereoscopic vision and hurricanes. About breaking glass, small children walking, and a Daimler limousine slamming into a stone wall in slow motion. Images that ]as far as their origin is concerned] have nothing in common are compared, intertwined, spliced together. And all of a sudden the various parts form a sequence and find a rhythm.