Austrian Selection
Six works which deconstruct, reconstruct and reveal the inner mechanisms and hidden desires buried in fragments of moving image.
Piece Toucheé
Martin Arnold (AUS /1989/ 16mm to digital/ 15mins)
Based on a an 18-second shot from 1950’s hollywood movie, using the optical printer as a microscope, Arnold re-animates the frames and amplifies the inadvertent movements and hesitations of the actors. The outcome is an almost physical excorcism of gender codes.
Edge Of Doom
Michaela Grill ( AUS /2020/digital/3mins)
A short succession of splits-screens gathers women in the throes of extreme states, screaming, with eyes wide, arms thrown up in dismay, angular eyebrows, stunned mouths: instants of extreme emotions sought and found in silent films of the 1920s.
48 Heads From The Merkurov Museum
Anna Artaka (AUS / 2012/ digital / 4mins)
Working intensively with death masks made by the Soviet sculptor Sergey Merkurov,
Instructions For A Light And Sound Machine
Peter Tscherkassky (AUS/2005/35mm to digital/17mins)
Using a scene from Sergio Leone’s classic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Tscherkassky creates a new story from flaws in the medium; blisters, scratches, distortions and cracks ¬– they overlay the narrative, shatter the illusion and give rise to a richly ambiguous piece.
Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy
Martin Arnold (AUS /1998/ 16mm to digital/ 14mins)
Dismantling Hollywood’s space/time system, Arnold rips up the classic language of cinema. In doing so he exposes the repressed sexual dynamics between Andy (Mickey Rooney), his girlfriend Betsy (Judy Garland) and Mrs Hardy (Fay Holden).
Occhiolino
Michaela Grill (AUS /2022/digital/11mins)
What seems to be a blinking eye is in fact, a massively enlarged views of a cell dividing, which nonetheless does not at all dampen the magic of the “entoptic” phenomenon produced here.
Greg Pope. 