Film ist. 7–12

For a long time now, Gustav Deutsch has been provoking wide-open eyes and mouths when he lets his selected, ingenious, newly discovered film finds talk to each other, successively expanding the basic question indicated by the title (about the nature of cinema). Chapters 7-12 of the Film ist. series deal with the fairground, the second ‘birthplace of film’ (after the scientific laboratory). The effort is enormous: Deutsch's poetically dense collection of images is made up of fragments from a good 190 early films - and beautifully interwoven with the atmospheric electronica of Fennesz/Dafeldecker/Siewert/Stangl. Early cinema specialist Tom Gunning has recognised a kind of ‘book of dreams’ in Film ist.; behind the seemingly scientific structure, the montage reveals itself to be an act of art and free association. (Stefan Grissemann)

Photo: Austrian Film Museum