CAMERA TEST

Siegfried Fruhauf, Austria, 16mm > digital, 4 min, 2022

The green leader of the 16mm film is still running, yet the rattling sound is already committed to forward movement. And indeed, it moves forward, but also back again, past hills, fir trees, and apple trees—and at some point, the gaze zooms into the seemingly passing landscape; but will also be forward again. This generates a simultaneously connecting and disturbing stroboscope effect, which generates after-images and allows the landscape to appear continuous despite obvious breaks; at the same time, the interim garish green “flash” offers glaring evidence that here we are dealing with a cinematically constructed journey rather than a “natural” one. Like the soundtrack, which is based on a staccato-style playback of ocean sounds split into stereo channels rather than a linear sound recording, the images are the cinematic synthesis of several camera pans across one and the same landscape, and not the result of a journey from A to B.—Christa Benzer

Siegfried Fruhauf (1976). 35+ films since 1998; screenings at venues including Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Media City FIlm Festival, Cannes Film Festival, Image Forum, Venice International Film Festival, Austrian Film Museum, Berlinale, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Centre Pompidou, San Francisco Cinematheque, Yale University, and Sundance Film Festival. Austrian Art Award for Film (2018). Lives in Vienna and Heiligenberg, Austria.

III.

Alexandre Larose, Canada, 35mm, 12 min, 2022

In this third part of Larose’s scènes de ménage, the work with movement and in-camera overlays intensifies. Figures move towards and away from the camera, with a swiping hand or a turning head taking on a gentle, volatile quality. Larose articulates a story with different sequences in which domestic interiors alternate with exterior vegetation, in a film that seems to emerge from the depths of photochemical emulsion.—Elena

Duque

Alexandre Larose (1978). 20+ films since 2004; screenings at venues including New York Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, George Eastman Museum, European Media Art Festival, Media City Film Festival, 25FPS, Austrian Film Museum, VideoEx, New York Film Festival, Viennale, Anthology Film Archives, Image Forum and Metrograph. Films in permanent collection of Austrian Film Museum. Lives in Montréal, Québec.