49/95 thousandyearsofcinema
Kren associates the anniversary of cinematography with the Third Reich, which was to last a thousand years. ‘One Hundred Years of Cinema’ also means images ruling for one hundred years, images which have lost referentiality and come to dominate reality.
(Peter Tscherkassky)
Cinema celebrates its birthday. A century which wants to be known as modern and be understood as neither linear nor circular, but accepted with jumps, tears, holes and cavities. The perception that film and its apparatus have offered aid in the formulation of this understanding. Camera lenses are turned on the world and bear witness to its existence, but it is quite another nature which "speaks to the camera as that which speaks to the eye" (Benjamin).
In thousandyearsofcinema Kurt Kren turns his perspective around with a quiet and unsettling irony. The images appear. One eye tightly shut and the other pressed against the viewfinder. This is the standard position which Kren captures in single frames. Uncountable photographers, with their acutely-angled cameras directed at St. Stephan´s Cathedral whizz by. Picture after picture is about to be exposed in a form of collective unanimity. In the decades of his engagement with film, Kren has never conceived hermetically, and never permitted film, history and life situation to be set against each other. To allow the material, technical apparatus or conceptual purity to deflect him from the desire for filmic vision is foreign to his nature. He remains true to precise work and experiment, curious about communication with the world outside.
thousandyearsofcinema is not only bound up with this standpoint, but also shows a new direction. The soundtrack is becoming important, not as a scratched on noise, but as voice, as text. The passages, taken from Peter Lorre´s film The Lost, open up another realm where the element picture grates against that of voice. "I have seen these eyes before." A rapid sequence of images show the allegedly objective lenses of the cameras. On the soundtrack is someone who subjectively believes in the truth that he recognizes his opposite number, only to be curtly repudiated. A space containing Peter Lorre´s eyes is created by implication. A man driven, a lonely man, both before and after Hitler´s thousand-year empire. A man who cannot forget.
thousandyearsofcinema by Kurt Kren is a small utopia, a witness for the explosive power of the film medium set against the framework of 100 or 1000 years of (hi)stories.
(Elisabeth Büttner)
Kren recorded this film within 30 days. For two hours each day he filmed tourists filming and taking pictures of St. Stephen´s Cathedral in Vienna. Because the film was exposed at a rate of two images per second, each person on film was hardly on for more than five frames, and each day no more than one meter of film was used. Because of the fixed length of the film roll, the number of days spent turned out to be one month. The rhythmic changes in the images were not planned, but are a result of how quick the filmed persons were at taking their pictures and conversely how quickly Kren could react to the situation. At the end of the film Kren discloses the object of their labors. The sound Kren uses is composed of dialogues and noises from the film Der Verlorene (The Lost One) which was made by and stars Peter Lorre. Kren does not attempt to make any symbolic connections between the two.
(Hans Scheugl: "Die Filme. Eine kommentierte Filmographie," in: (ed.) Scheugl Ex Underground Kurt Kren. Seine Filme, Vienna 1996)
Hans Hurch about Kurt Kren
In an interview with Hans Scheugl about the ideas and techniques behind some of his films, the film-maker Kurt Kren told the following anecdote, which sheds an interesting light on his work. For his film Tree again (1978), Kren used a highly sensitive infra-red color film, a type which usually has to be developed within a very short period of time. However, Kren who has always worked on a very small budget, only had a roll of film which was already five years past its expiry date and, as Kren says, "there was little likelihood of anything turning out on the film." But he still decided to take shots of a large and splendid tree surrounded by bushes and a stretch of pastureland over a period of several weeks, from summer to autumn - a series of individual pictures taken from the same camera position. As he says, "I didn´t have much hope - (I knew) it was a crazy thing to do." But Kren´s illogical hope and his unshakeable confidence in his material were rewarded. Tree again became one of Kren´s most beautiful works - although it is difficult to single out any individual work from a corpus of extraordinary density and variety which spans over thirty years and includes over 40 films. The tree, the field, the sky, in fact the entire picture radiates an unusual, almost eerie artistry, with its rapidly changing blue, green and reddish hues, sometimes brightly illuminated for the fraction of a second like the flash of lightening in a technicolor horror film. Or a sky of deep blue with clouds scudding across it, an airplane drawing condensation trails which fade away imperceptibly, the abrupt juxtaposition of sun and shadow and the strong, gusty movement of the wind amongst branches and leaves, as though an endless and destructive storm were at work. An apocalyptic picture, yet one that is full of a wonderful, quiet beauty - the changing of the sun, and the play of light, how autumn arrives in a matter of seconds and the leaves begin to fall, the shadows of grazing animals which appear and disappear in the blink of an eye.
Much has been written about the abstract, serial, musical, structural or mathematical nature of Kurt Kren´s films, their affinity to painting, poetry or twelve-tone music; but too much concentration on their structure and rhythm has eclipsed the films´ objectivisation, their almost documentary quality. The compact and artistic interweaving of the fragments of reality being expressed - which may be glimpses out of a window, paths, trees, walls, the changing of the seasons, faces or the human body in motion - as well as the way they are filmed, processed and arranged can often go unrecognized even if each film is seen several times. The methods used by Kren range from extreme multiple exposure, individual shots, time-lapse, the use of filters and masks, alternating between positive and negative film, blurred images, imposing scratches and drawings on soundtracks and complicated cutting rhythms based on specifically pre-formulated diagrams to a variety of technical experiments and inventions which he has evolved over the years. And yet, appreciating Kurt Kren´s films is not a question of dissecting his technique, recognizing their richness of innovation or analyzing their rhythm. To understand these films it is not necessary to see through them but to feel and perceive them as real.
One of the most simple and at the same time most mysterious of Kren´s works was produced in 1967 under the title TV. It begins with several frames of black film followed by the view from the depths of a dark room, through a large window, onto a seaside promenade and the sea beyond it. In the foreground are the large black silhouettes of people sitting and standing, covering half the picture. Behind the window, sitting on a short, thick pole used for mooring ships, is a young girl looking out to the sea. All this is only visible for a few seconds, until the picture disappears and the screen is again covered by the darkness of black film, which, after a few moments, begins to reveal the picture again. Gradually it becomes clear that it is not the same shot, that something has changed. The girl is no longer alone, and one of the figures in the foreground is in the act of getting up. Later a ship appears, one of the black shadows has started smoking a cigarette and outside, a woman and child stroll through the scene. In the meantime the girl has been joined by two more girls. They wear roller-skates and move clumsily in an effort to retain their balance. Kren recalls that these images were taken from a café in the port of Venice, almost without deliberation and out of a sense of boredom while he was waiting for some friends. They consist of five different sequences, each one and a half seconds long, which he then had copied 21 times. The 21 copies of each of the 5 sequences, explains Kren, were then put together in a particular order, similar to a nursery or counting rhyme.
This contrasts with Kren´s earlier films, such as 48 Köpfe aus dem Szondi-Test (48 Heads from the Szondi Test), Bäume im Herbst (Trees in Autumn) or Mauern...(Walls...), which create an almost abstract graphic impression by virtue of the objects depicted, the frequent use of stop-motion shots and strict adherence to the principle of serial montage. TV is also unlike the cycle of "documentary" films made between 1964 and 1966 which portray the happenings of the actionists Muehl and Brus as a condensation of naked bodies, movement, blood, food, colour and a cornucopia of material into a rapid, flickering picture sequence, at once offering and depriving the viewer of its content in a wild filmic play. TV differed from all these works in that for the first time, small, apparently storylike fragments were brought together in a sort of reflexive montage. "The great influence and significance of this film," says Malcolm Le Grice, "lies in the fact that it redistributes the structuring process from the film-maker and how he organizes the subject of the film to the viewer and his/her perception of what is presented." Between the abstract montage rhythm of the individual segments and the concrete, real picture content, the viewer is offered a spectrum of potential connections, movements, structures, shifts, repetitions and faces. And while one is still trying to establish the relation between the short sequences, the repetition of the little girl´s movements take on the aspect of a graceful dance.
Someone once said, "the greatness of film-making lies in being modest enough to realize that one is confined to taking photographs." Kurt Kren´s films are neither paintings, nor poems nor music; they are not even typically filmic, as the term is used in the degenerate rhetoric of most modern film artists. It is this self-awareness which constitutes their greatness.
(Hans Hurch, 1989)
Thomas Korschil zu 49/95 tausendjahrekino von Kurt Kren (Article)
Kren erzählt, daß ihn das Thema schon lange faszinierte, er es aber wiederholt verwarf, weil er nicht wußte, wie er es filmisch umsetzen könnte. Als er sich tatsächlich daran machte, unterwarf er sich den Umständen, die die Ausführung der Idee unweigerlich mit sich brachte. Um sein Vorhaben zu realisieren, mußte Kren sich so nah wie noch nie an sein menschliches Motiv, die photographierenden Touristen, heranpirschen, und er mußte blitzschnell reagieren, um den begehrten Moment, das "Abdrücken" der Souvenirjäger auf Film bannen zu können. Die reichhaltige Rhythmik von tausendjahrekino ergab sich - nachdem Kren eine niedrige Bildfrequenz festgesetzt hatte - aus seiner Arbeitsweise, aus dem Warten, dem Reagieren und dem jeweiligen Verhalten der Aufgenommenen. (...)
Es lassen sich grundsätzlich drei verschiedene Bewegungsarten unterscheiden, die eng miteinander verzahnt sind: die Bewegung der handgehaltenen Kamera, die Bewegungen der gefilmten Menschen und die in der Aufeinanderfolge der kurzen Stücke entstehende filmische Bewegung, die Animation, die sich aus der Montage ergibt. Die unwillkürlichen Bewegungen der (intentional starr) handgehaltenen Kamera wirken ähnlich wie in Krens Beitrag zu Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken, sind jedoch in dem schnellen Wechsel der Bilder nicht so leicht zu identifizieren wie dort. Krens sanfte Kamerabewegungen bleiben fühlbar und bilden ein wichtiges Element der organischen Form des Films. Die Bewegungen der Gefilmten beschränken sich in den sekundenbruchteillangen Stücken auf kleine Handlungen im Zusammenhang mit dem Akt des Phoptographierens: das Ansetzten der Kamera, das Scharfstellen und Auslösen. Zumeist sind die Touristen beiahe erstarrt in ihrer Tätigkeit und werden animiert durch Krens Handkamera, vor allem aber durch die am stärksten wirksamen Bewegungen, jenen, die sich aus dem "Schnitt" ergeben. (...)
Das Auge sucht und findet Kontinuitäten in der Abfolge der disparaten Fragmente und kittet Brüche, um Bewegungen über mehrere Einstellungen hinweg zu illusionieren. So entstehen zum Beispiel "Schwenks des Photoapparates", die sich aus mehreren Aufnahmen von starr in verschiedene Richtungen gehaltenen Kameras zusammensetzen. Andererseits finden sich ruckartige Bewegungen, wie der mehrmals auftretende kompositorische "Achsensprung" von einem diagonal nach links zu einem nach rechts oben gerichteten Objektiv. Darüberhinaus generiert der Ablauf der Bilder abstraktere Bewegungen, die sich sprachlich nicht mehr fassen lassen. (...)
In tausendjahrekino versucht Kren den identifizierenden Blick des Betrachters gerade an diesem für autonome Kunst so heiklen Gegenstand (der Darstellung von Menschen) zu brechen. Der identifizierende Blick hält sich fest an Bekanntem - an Gesichtern, Augen, Kameras als statischen Gegenständen -, dem entgegen Krens filmische Animation eine Stufenleiter von Phänomenen schafft, die sich vom direkt Abbildhaften zunehmend entfernen und zur Lockerung des gewohnten Blicks verleiten. Dem schweifenden, entspannten und dennoch konzentrierten Blick, der abläßt vom reinen Wiedererkennen und sich dem mitunter abstrakteren "Formspiel" der filmischen Bewegungen hingibt, eröffnen sich neue, bislang unbekannte Ebenen der Wahrnehmung. Der identifizierende Blick schränkt ein, da er nur auf Bekanntes geht. Durch eine Herausforderung und Überforderung dieses Blicks verführen Krens Filme zu dessen Überschreitung und Erweiterung. Hier müssen Krens gestalterische Strenge und Freizügigkeit sich notwendig ergänzen, um den Blick zu animieren und ihm gleichzeitig Freiräume zur Selbsttätigkeit zu überlassen. Werke wie diese dekonstruieren (Altes) und konstruieren (Neues) zugleich und leiten an, ohne anzuführen, begleiten eigenes Sehen, Fühlen, Denken.
Die Tonebene, die tausendjahrekino im Gegensatz zu den meisten anderen Kren-Filmen besitzt, verstärkt die visuelle Thematik und bereichert den Film um zusätzliche Bedeutungsaspekte. Ursprünglich wollte Kren am Drehort aufgenommene Originalgeräusche verwenden, was jedoch nicht zu einem befriedigenden Ergebnis führte. Als ihn jemand bei der Tonaufnahme ansprach, er kenne ihn von früher, was Kren verneinen mußte, kam er auf die Idee, Tonstücke aus dem Spielfilm Der Verlorene von Peter Lorre (1951) zu verwenden. In den zusammenmontierten Dialogfragmenten ist ein aufdringlicher Betrunkener zu hören, der vergeblich versucht anderen, ihm anscheinend fremden Menschen seine Bekanntschaft zu beweisen. Ein mehrmals wiederholtes, insistierendes "Ich kenne Sie", wird bald zu einem "...keiner kennt mich". Die anderen können ihn nicht erkennen oder wollen sich nicht zu erkennen geben und fühlen sich lediglich belästigt.
Unschwer bezieht man die gehörte Szene auf Krens Unterfangen, filmend nahezu in die Intimsphäre der Touristen vorzudringen. Selbstironisch reflektiert der Text Krens eigene Aufdringlichkeit und gleichzeitig das Ignoriertwerden, das Unerkannbleiben unter Fremden daheim. Kren kokketiert mit der Rolle eines Verlorenen - und das nicht zu Unrecht. Die Zeit der Handlung des Spielfilms, Zweite Weltkrieg und Nachkriegszeit, läßt an Krens Biographie denken, an die erste Entwurzelung des Kindes, das auf Veranlassung des jüdischen Vaters das Tausendjährige Reich in Holland überdauert, läßt weiters auch an die Ignoranz der Gesellschaft gegenüber dem radikalen Künstler im Österreich der 60er Jahre denken, wofür es Zeugnisse genug gibt, nicht zuletzt in Krens neuerlicher Emigration. Als Verlorener tritt uns Kren offensichtlich in seinen amerikanischen, ungestaltet und emotionsgeladen stotternden "homeless-movies" gegenüber. Zum zweitenmal nach Wien zurückgekehrt, scheint Kren ein notwendiges Maß an Geborgenheit erlangt zu haben, worauf die Integrität der Filme dieser Zeit deutet. Der Mann hinter tausendjahrekino weiß, was er tut, er spricht artikuliert und in klaren Bildern, wie einer, der wieder zu sich gefunden hat.
Fast untypisch für Kren ist das deutliche Ende in diesem Film. Quasi als auflösende Pointe zeigt seine Kamera das Objekt der tausend Touristenblicke, den Dom. Der Ton verkündet ein apokalyptisches Ende nicht ohne Ironie mit Sirene und: "Fliegeralarm, alle Mann in den Heldenkeller!" Exakt synchron mit dem Geräusch einer zuschlagenden Tür endet auch das Bild. Es folgen Schwärze und Stille.
(Thomas Korschil: Die ersten, die letzten, soweit, in: Hans Scheugl (Hrsg.), Ex Underground. Kurt Kren. Seine Filme, Wien 1996)
Elisabeth Büttner zu "49/95 tausendjahrekino" von Kurt Kren (Critique)
... In tausendjahrekino dreht Kurt Kren die Perspektive um, mit einer leisen und beunruhigenden Ironie. Die Abbildungen rücken ins Visier. Das eine Auge zugekniffen, das andere hinter den Sucher geklemmt, diese Standardpositur fängt Kren in Einzelfotos ein. Zahllose Fotographierende, die ihre Kamera im schrägen Winkel auf den Wiener Stephansdom richten, huschen, im Kurzschnitt montiert, vorbei. Bilder über Bilder sind dabei, abgelichtet zu werden, in kollektiver Einmütigkeit. Kren hat in den Jahrzehnten seiner Filmarbeit nie hermetisch gedacht, Film, Historie und Lebenssituation nicht gegeneinander ausgespielt. Material, Apparat oder konzeptuellen Purismus über die Entdeckungslust am filmischen Sehen zu stellen liegt ihm fern. Er bleibt präzisen Arbeiten und dem Experiment zugewandt, neugierig auf eine Kommunikation mit dem Außen.
tausendjahrekino verbindet sich mit dieser Haltung und zeigt im Oeuvre von Kren eine weitere Bewegung an. Der Ton wird wichtig, nicht als gekratztes Geräusch, sondern als Stimme, als Text. Die Textpassagen - dem Film Der Verlorene von Peter Lorre entnommen - öffnen ein weiteres Außenfeld, in dem der Film der Bilder und der Film der Stimmen aneinander reiben. Diese Augen hab ich doch schon mal gesehen. Im Bild, in geschwinder Abfolge, das vermeintlich objektive Auge der Kameras. Auf der Tonspur einer, der subjektiv sein Gegenüber zu erkennen glaubt, wahr spricht, in seinem Ansinnen jedoch brüsk abgewiesen wird. Im assoziativen Raum die Augen des Peter Lorre. Ein Getriebener, ein Einsamer, vor und nach dem Faschismus des Tausendjährigen Reiches, einer, der nicht vergessen kann.
tausendjahrekino von Kurt Kren, eine kleine Utopie für die Sprengkraft des Mediums Film gegenüber dem Rahmen von 100 oder 1000 Jahren Geschichte(n). (Elisabeth Büttner)
Seven Instances of the Austrian Avant-Garde, by Ed Halter
Imagine this tale as a parable of the distinctive paradoxes of avant-garde cinema. Exceedingly erudite conceptual structures and complex aesthetic systems achieve realization through collisions of light and sound, designed to throw the viewer into a confrontation with the barest elements of cinematic form, made possible with the slightly antiquated products of 19th century science. The formalist edge of Austrian filmmaking has always pushed such extremesmachine flatness and spiritual emotion, animal shock and cognitive puzzle, fleshy materialism and ghostly mystery.
Austrias success in fostering such a powerful experimental film scene is well known among cineastes worldwide. A conflux of generative factors can be cited: the storied history of avant-garde art and literature in Vienna; the influence of filmmakers such as Valie Export, Peter Kubelka and Kurt Kren, who attained international renown decades ago; the success of shorts distributor sixpackfilm, which has helped keep Austrian artists prominent in international festivals; and, not least, the long-standing commitment of governmental organizations such as Film Division of the Department of the Arts to fund such adventurous, non-narrative films. Dynamite doesnt come cheaply.
Look at a sample seven titles underwritten by the Film Division, and the impact of this sustained support will be made clear.
1. Kurt Kren, 49/95 Tausendjahrekino (1995)
There is a discernable sensibility to Austrian experimentsa cluster of threads that run through many of finest examples of filmmaking. Commissioned to mark the cinemas centenary, Krens Tausendjahrekinoopens with a title screen speckled with black bits of dust and detritus, then volleys through staccato flashes of tourists pointing cameras up at the St Stephens Cathedral in Vienna. Each of their banal snaps is countered by Krens guerrilla anthropology, captured with his shaking, zooming lens. Like this one, the best Austrian films are short, brutal and dirty.
2. Martin Arnold, Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy (1998)
Arnold takes Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, two icons of innocent 1930s Americana, then stretches and remixes their language and body movements into a minuet of robotic jitters and beastly bleats, uncovering an uneasy sexual tension in the triangle of girl, boy and mother. The filmmaker digs deeps, hits nerves.
3. Elke Groen, Tito-Material (1998)
From the rubble of a decimated cinema in Bosnia and Herzogovina, Groen found propaganda newsreel footage of Yugoslavian President-for-Life Tito. Reprinted, Tito moves silently under layers of decay. Peter Gidal once defined materialist cinema as trafficking in that space of tension between materialist flatness, grain, light, movement, and the supposed reality that is represented. To this Tito-Materialadds the tension between past and present, state-sponsored fantasy and political reality.
4. Gustav Deutsch, Film Ist. (1998/2002)
The past becomes an ever stranger land in Film Ist. , filled with disjunctive colonialist mansions, supernatural religious footage, and accidentally surrealist science documentaries, all snatched from the era of silent cinema. These fragments are slowed down, re-cut and set to staticky electronic soundscapes. The flicker and hum evoke a hypnotic state: revisiting times lost as a form of disembodied dreaming. The soundtrack itself presages the experiments in digital, visual glitch seen in a more recent generation of Austrian video art.
5. Siegfried A. Fruhauf, Exposed (2001)
White oblong shapes float like clouds across one another, sailing across an expanse of movie-screen blackness, each glowing box in the round-cornered shape of a 16mm sprocket hole. One again a spirit is summoned from the very materials of the machine.
5. Kerstin Cmelka, Camera (2002)
In Cmelkas earlier films, Mit Mir and Et In Arcadia Ego, the filmmaker plays with her own doppelgangers, superimposing herself upon herself multiple times. Camera uses similar optical tricks to print moving images of woodlands on the interior walls of a small room. Recall that camera merely means room or chamber in Latin: so is the film camera offer a window on the world, or merely in illusion of one? Maybe we cant really leave the roomor cameraafter all.
7. Peter Tscherkassky, Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (2005)
American critics blithely assume that films from outside our borders always comment on our own cultureas if the worlds artistic output had the mere function of an elaborate vanity mirror for us (So, tell me honestly, how do I look?). But here such a claim does not feel like this kind of indulgence. Tscherkassky takes moments from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and handprints them into a rat-a-tat-tat wartime montage. The throb of exploding bullets reminds us of the clacking of the projector over our heads: the reflection throws us out of the theater and back into the world.
* * *
Certainly not every nation that has chosen to invest its capital into filmmaking has been as fortunate as Austria with the cultural returns. In many other nations, governmental financing and grant foundations make the mistake underwriting the bland and inoffensive. The strategy in Austria seems to have been to support the strongest elements of the idiosyncratic and rebellious fringe, to encourage daringly noncommercial work, and to strive for art, rather than mere entertainment.
Look at key words from these seven titles: kino, waste, material, film, exposed, camera, light and sound machine. Austrian experimental cinema always returns to contemplate its own being, but in doing so, seeks new engagement with the world.