Retrospective | PETER TSCHERKASSKY
by Maximiliano Cruz
Peter Tscherkassky (Vienna, 1958) is a total artist, a filmmaker, promoter, critic, cultural manager and theoretician involved in Austrian and international experimental cinema. Right from his first film, Kreuzritter (1979), he set a framework of aesthetic codes rooted in the free structuralism shown in the work of figures such as Joseph Cornell and Len Lye during the 30s, and he reached a style of his own establishing communicating vessels to the legacy of avant-garde giants such as Kurt Kren and Peter Kubelka. Tscherkassky’s films go hand in hand with his critical penmanship and his work as researcher and curator of exhibitions and publications related to avant-garde cinema and, in particular, to the fertile and abundant experimental Austrian cinema. Founder of such significant organizations as the Austria Filmmakers Cooperative and the distribution company SixPack Film, Peter Tscherkassky has forged through perseverance a place for himself in the history of experimental film.
.jpg)
Peter Tscherkassky | Programa 1
EROTIQUE
Austria | 1982 | 8 min | Blu-ray
URLAUBSFILM
Austria | 1983 | 9 min 15sec | 16 mm
TABULA RASA
Austria | 1987/89 | 17 min 2 sec | 16 mm
PARALLEL SPACE: INTER-VIEW
Austria | 1992 | 18 min 20 sec | 35 mm
MANUFRAKTUR
Austria | 1985 | 2 min | 35 mm
NACHTSTÜCK (NOCTURNE)
Austria | 2006 | 1 min | 35 mm
L’ARRIVÉE
Austria | 1997/98 | 2 min 9 sec | 35 mm
OUTER SPACE
Austria | 1999 | 9 min 58 sec | 35 mm
DREAM WORK
Austria | 2001 | 11 min | 35 mm
Q&A with director: Sala José Revueltas, february 24th, 13:30 h and february 26th, 13:00 h.
Peter Tscherkassky | Programa 2
FREEZE FRAME
Austria | 1983 | 9 min 38 sec | 16 mm
KELIMBA
Austria | 1986 | 10 min | 16 mm
HAPPY-END
Austria | 1996 | 10 min 56 sec | 16 mm
SHOT-COUNTERSHOT
Austria | 1987 | 22 sec | 16 mm
COMING ATTRACTIONS
Austria | 2010 | 25 min | 35 mm
GET READY (VIENNALE ’99 TRAILER)
Austria | 1999 | 1 min 4 sec | 35 mm
INSTRUCTIONS FOR A LIGHT AND SOUND MACHINE
Austria | 2005 | 17 min | 35 mm
Q&A with director: Sala José Revueltas, february 25th, 15:30 h and februray 28th, 20:00 h.
Tscherkassky is the result of many factors blending together to keep him ingrained in the world of contemporary cinema. His work encompasses over 30 short films that range from the thundering 22 seconds of Shot-Countershot (1987, 16mm-S 8 blow up, b/w, silent) to the epic 25 minutes of his last and highly praised film Coming Attractions (2010, 35mm, b/w, sound). Tscherkassky’s films display mind-blowing handicraft virtuosity in their edition and visual effects. The sensory aesthetic experience they create is well beyond any narrative ambition, however faint this might seem on the surface of his work, where aesthetic findings prevail over dramatic ones and thus arises the power of a cinema which claims the dispositive and puts in evidence the “seams” of the trade, questioning the role of cinema and filmmakers within contemporary art.
Early on in his career, Tscherkassky planted the seed that would grow to feed his whole work as a filmmaker to this date, one of the leitmotivs in his films: a concern for properly encompassing, exploring and artistically valuing the material used as media for audiovisual expression —the film footage, the stock footage, the found footage. Films such as Parallel Space: Inter-View (1992, 35mm), Happy-End (1996, 35mm), Get Ready (Viennale '99-Trailer) (1999, 35mm CinemaScope), Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (35mm, CinemaScope, 2005, music score by Dirk Schaefer) and Nachtstück (Nocturne) (2006, 35mm) are the testimony of an obsessive conviction to remodel the semantics of the dispositive in order to confer to it a value far above that of a mere medium, making it a fundamental part of the piece itself by intervening directly upon the found footage frame by frame.
And it is within this process where the dialogue between Tscherkassky’s work and the general state of current cinema becomes relevant, as the latter experienced its own transition from film to digital at a rhythm that was somewhat slower than the gurus of the end of celluloid predicted. The handicraft procedures used in the direction and edition by Tscherkassky are a response, a direct confrontation to the rationalization of humanity that, in his own words: “is a derivation of the Illustration which followed French Revolution; from then on, all social strata were ruled by Reason as the ultimate determining factor of political power.” From the point of view of economy, this victory of reason had its manifestation in the industrialization of the world, which parted from the empowerment of technology. Within art (including cinema), some authors responded to this process of mechanization putting in evidence the inner processes and structures of all art as well as their meaning and creative possibilities, essentially by unveiling and intervening their working material. This is why Tscherkassky’s work (with its textures impossible to find in any other realm of life: unique atmospheres of images and sounds protected by the authenticity of the human factor and the noise of the footage) reminds us of the origins of an art born right in the middle of the rivers of experimentation, entertainment and technology with the ultimate goal of reaching the sensibility of an audience at a sensory level.
One of the peaks in Tscherkassky’s work is his famous CinemaScope Trilogy (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, 2002), made up by L'Arrivée (1997/98, 35mm CinemaScope), Outer Space (1999, 35mm Cinema- Scope) and Dream Work (2001, 35mm CinemaScope, music score by Kiawasch Saheb Nassagh). This Trilogy was made entirely without using a camera, in the intimacy of a darkroom. L’Arrivée uses some shots of Terence Young’s film Mayerling (UK, 1969), and the other two are built upon footage taken from Sidney J. Furie’s horror film The Entity (USA, 1983). The last film within this line of exploration is Tscherkassky’s master piece Coming Attractions (Best Short Film, Venice 2010, 35mm, 25 min., b/w, music score by Dirk Schaefer). Not without humor, in this film Tscherkassky undermines some of the rules and conventions of avant-garde by putting it together with classical films through some tools derived from the language of publicity to unify it. With direct quotes to Méliès, the Lumière brothers, Cocteau and Fernand Léger, Coming Attractions naughtily examines the subliminal possibilities of cinema, offering the audience one of the most powerful experiences to be found in contemporary film.
.jpg)
Tscherkassky’s films are fully aware of history and insert themselves in an evolutional stage of film language to reflect on the roots of cinema itself Simultaneously to the European publication of the essential book Film Unframed: A History of Austrian Avant-Garde Cinema, edited by Peter Tscherkassky, we will have the honor of watching in Mexico in this Second Edition of the UNAM International Film Festival two blocks with some of his most relevant films, selected by Tscherkassky himself. The screening of these films will be complemented with his presence in the theaters and a Master Class —open to all, organized in collaboration between FICUNAM and the Bergman Chair in Film and Theater— where he will comment and deconstruct his film, Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine. This is a tasty dish, not to be missed by any inquiring film lover in Mexico City.
Tuesday 28 | Vestíbulo salas de cine CCU | 17:00 hrs.
Presentation of the book:
From a Dark Room. The Manufractured Cinema of Peter Tscherkassky
* Published by Interior 13 and Fundación Alumnos 47
With presence of Peter Tscherkassky and the editors.