Heavy Eyes

A kind of white noise weighs heavy over this film, which is revealingly titled Heavy Eyes: Digital rain overshadows the (formerly) analogue film material. These wild proliferations of images seem to have been scribbled or scratched, and spots spread across them like sores taking over human bodies, and corroding faces: This is a cinema of abstraction and Neo-Expressionism. Ghostly and mask-like faces appear (and disappear again immediately in the digital fog), eerily duplicated, electronically cloned. The nervous, gracefully constructed soundtrack provides a matching synthetic, haunting accompaniment. The roughly outlined animation soon becomes more concrete — resembling a tracing or overdrawing of found film images in which trembling figures can be seen in anonymous urban landscapes, a girl stands at a window, a young man grins into space, while another only lowers his eyes. Later, two teenagers smile from the damaged images, kept at a distance on film and rigorously separated in the montage. A motorized journey begins, a maelstrom is created. The mysterious story behind these scenes remains elusive and can only be guessed at, a repressed shocker shoved deep into the unconscious. Near the end the visual metastases intensify, the film’s surface flashes and throbs. Heavy Eyes, in line with its title, outlines a fiction of filmic vision involving a lethargy of the eyes which creates both the illusion of movement and an unsettling multiplication of external events. An image of eyeglasses that have been stepped on and crushed ends the film: The old manner of seeing no longer applies.

(Stefan Grissemann)



Orig. Title
Schwere Augen
Year
2011
Country
Austria
Duration
10 min
Category
Experimental
Orig. Language
No Dialogue
Downloads
Schwere Augen (Text)
Heavy Eyes (Image)
Heavy Eyes (Image)
Credits
Director
Siegfried A. Fruhauf
Concept & Realization
Siegfried A. Fruhauf
Music
Jürgen Gruber
Supported by
Land Oberösterreich, Innovative Film Austria
Available Formats
35 mm (Distribution Copy)
Aspect Ratio
1:1,85
Sound Format
Dolby Surround
Color Format
b/w
Blu-ray (Distribution Copy)
Aspect Ratio
16:9
Sound Format
stereo
Festivals (Selection)
2011
Viennale - Vienna Int. Film Festival
2012
Graz - Diagonale, Festival des österreichischen Films
Vila do Conde - Festival Internacional de Curtas-Metragens
Linz - Crossing Europe Film Festival
Ann Arbor - Film Festival
Edinburgh - International Film Festival
Melbourne - Int. Film Festival
Zürich - VIDEOEXperimental
Hamburg - Int. Kurzfilm-Festival & No Budget
Seattle - Int. Film Festival
Montréal - Festival du Nouveau Cinéma
Vilnius - Tindirindis International Animated Film Festival
Uppsala - Int. Short Film Festival
Denver - Int. Film Festival
Paris - L'Etrange Festival
Victoria - Antimatter Underground Film Festival
München - UnderDox, Festival für Dokument und Experiment
Cork - Int. Film Festival
Madrid - Semana de Cine Experimental
Jihlava Documentary Film Festival
Mar del Plata - Int. Film Festival
Lima - Peru Int. Short Film Festival
2013
Melbourne - MIAF International Animation Filmfestival
Seoul - SICAF
London Int. Animation Festival LIAF