Schwechater

synopsis

Backed by an ingenious score, this black-and-white film with twelve colour fragments is composed of an exact number of frames containing extremely short image sequences that switch between several basic motifs—a woman at a table, a hand pouring beer, a group of people, or a beer brand logo. Flashes of contrasting images alternate with passages of blackness and are interspersed with two electronic tones. An advertising job rejected by the client gave rise to this prime example of metrical film. It forces viewers to use their eyes as if they were hands: to grasp what is visible and not let go.

“In a sense, Schwechater is the most stunning eye-training film ever made, for it is, indeed, a film that trains us to see while it opens our eyes to the nature of film. In challenging the notion of how many frames must be shown for an image to be perceived, Schwechater destroys conventional assumptions concerning filmic perception. It is a masterwork, a work stripped to essentials, complex in structure, dissolving one of the basic notions of the art of cinema: the illusion of the moving image.” — Elena Pinto Simon, “The Films of Peter Kubelka”, The Artforum

Source: https://www.artforum.com/features/the-films-of-peter-kubelka-210081/

biography

Peter Kubelka (born 1934) is an Austrian filmmaker, a key figure in avant-garde cinema, and a professor of film and cooking as art forms. His “metrical films” laid the foundations for structural film. He began his theoretical work on cooking in 1967, and in his culinary lectures he combines nonverbal action with philosophical reflection. His work was presented at Ji.hlava IDFF in Martina Kudláček's documentary Fragments of Kubelka (2012).

film details

director:

Petr Kubelka