Page 64 - Studio International - November December 1975

strip. Weibel made a film without a film : no camera and (30 sec) where the named colours were so changed by
no strip, only the noise of a camera and Weibel himself as shooting and reproduction that they lost their original
the image before the screen (Nivea, 1967). Export character. Together with Export and Weibel, he is
operated with different screens : paper screen to skin. contributing to the exhibition 'Art from Language', held
By using new technology and creating new sensory in the Museum of 20th Century Art, Vienna, from
experiences through the extension of formal film into November to December this year. His work in progress
material film, the second generation found a lot of includes some language films :
methods of avoiding narration and at the same time Wien in Namen: on a blank filmstrip all the street names
retaining representation. New non-narrative structures of Vienna are written. The act of production is more
were discovered, environmental pieces, film sculptures, important than the act of projection, because the names
film installations and all sorts of expanded movies were change their mode of being : in projecting they become
created. The material film included structural films, abstract signs.
conceptual films and project films. In 1968 Weibel/ /-Film: from some signs on public buildings he
Export made one of the first itinerary films, Eine Reise
ist eine Reise wert (8 mm, 8 min), where during a journey
from Kiel to Vienna all signs on the street as a spatial
parameter were filmed. Weibel and Export wanted to
emphasize the shift from the theatre situation to the gallery
to emphasize the explicit art character of these films.
STATE OF AFFAIRS
From the second generation only Export, Schmidt
and Weibel are still working in the field of experimental
cinema. Scheugl has been in India since the publication
of his books. Muehl and Bauer are shooting
documentaries on life in their commune. These films
evidently lie in areas other than the avant-garde cinema.
Ernst Schmidt jr. is a devotee of the very difficult art
of not doing classical art. He is now accumulating his
experiences in a very long project that will be a multiple
projection, one part a long film on Vienna and the
second part 23 short films on the 23 districts of Vienna.
His old method, the slow shift from documentary to
abstraction, will again be used. But different formal
methods will be employed. As the traditional zoom goes
from total view to close up, Schmidt will proceed from
documentary techniques to minimal structures.
Archive material involving historical reminiscences will be

Ernst Schmidt Jr. Eine Subgeschichte des Films 1974

filmed the writing in such a way that some letters were
Ernst Schmidt Jr. Wien in Namen 1975
covered and finally the name of the film-maker appeared
on the frames.
intercut with sections of commercial movies, interviews Master over 230 cars: a car park was filmed in very
with living persons and old newsreel. The short films short shots. The camera view shows only the numbers of
especially will be formal exercises. Some examples : the places. The minimal content (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.)
since the social-democratic party is dominant in Vienna corresponds to the film structure (addition of the shots),
the city is called 'Red Vienna'. Therefore all symbols of but the ciphers are variable in colour, size, shape, in
Vienna like opera, burgtheater, etc, are filmed with a red shadow, in sun, partially covered by cars, etc. Reality
filter. The incongruence of language and image has offers such a great formal richness. The endless variations
interested Schmidt from the start, eg Colour film, 1967 which the subject of this film affords, makes for a
practically infinite film. Therefore the result can only be a
selection. To show this, the film shows his own
grammar.
In 1974 Schmidt made Eine Subgeschichte des
Films (1,5 min). The film consists of 127 x 16 frames of
the book of the same title. Each photograph of this book
was filmed 4 times as follows : first 7 frames, then 5, then
3, then 1 —16 frames. The book has 127 images. The
following is the score of the film (the left cipher is the
number of the photograph, the right cipher the number of
frames)
1/7
2/7 1/5
3/7 2/5 1/3
4/7 2/5 1/3
4/7 3/5 2/3 1/1
Ernst Schmidt Jr. Master over 230 Cars 1975 5/7 4/5 3/3 2/1
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