Cinematographie (2009)

Overview

This structuralist experiment breaks through the traditional sequence of frames and uses double exposure to shed new light on the filmstrip. Cinematographie (literally "writing with light") consists of flickering black-and-white footage of almost unrecognizable trees that appears crosswise onscreen. The film is silent with the exception of two sounds at the beginning, and the damage to the image grows increasingly intense: we see cables, hairs and dust distorting it all. Occasionally, a bleak sun shines through or human silhouettes appear in an ever faster flickering. The Austrian filmmaker Philipp Fleischmann built a circular camera obscura construction in a forest, 360 degrees around, in which the light enters through a small hole and shines on light-sensitive material. Inside the camera, he placed two 16mm filmstrips side by side: one was exposed to the world outside the camera obscura, the other to the world inside the construction.