This new DVD compiles eight short films made by Peter Tscherkassky, including multi-awarded breathtaking Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine and his most recent film Coming Attractions. Along "Films from a Dark Room" (INDEX008) featuring internationally celebrated Tscherkassky's found footage trilogy - L'arrivée, Outer Space, Dream Work - this new release on INDEX offers an exhilarating excursion in Peter Tscherkassky's radical cinema.
Breaking Ground: 60 Years of Austrian Experimental Cinema
August 17 - September 22, 2012
UCLA Film & Television Archive - Billy Wilder Theater
10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90024
Austria’s avant-garde film tradition, arising at mid-century (and thus, relatively later than those of other Western nations) has been among the most sustained and radical of such traditions. As with other Austrian arts, it is a response (in part) to past national decadence and entrenched conservatism; its repository of cutting-edge experimental film and video works is uniquely impressive and progressive, fracturing into ever-newer distinctions.
The programs in this series have been constructed from avant-garde films and videos produced between 1955 and 2010 in which virtually every technique and genre imaginable is employed, from formalist and structuralist works by such globally renowned figures as Peter Kubelka, Peter Tscherkassky and Martin Arnold, to the radical work by performance-based artists such as VALIE EXPORT, Mara Mattuschka, Kurt Kren and the Viennese actionists, as well as the boundary-breaking contemporary output of artists including Siegfried A. Fruhauf, Johann Lurf and Virgil Widrich.
The unique contribution of Austrian avant-garde film to world cinema is universally acknowledged. Yet there is no single English book dedicated to illuminating its historical and aesthetic evolution. We intend to address this lack with a comprehensive publication. The core of this book will consist of a richly illustrated text that provides an exhaustive description of avant-garde film production in Austria, both past and present.
As each year the London Film Festival features their Experimenta Weekend, dedicated to 'artists' film & video'. Curated by Mark Webber with assistance from Melissa Gronlund, the event will feature eight programmes of film and video with the latest work of artists such as Nathaniel Dorsky, Peter Tscherkassky, Ben Rivers or Miranda Pennell. Filmmakers Emily Richardson and Martin Arnold will present their new works as two installations that will be running during the whole weekend. Lewis Klahr and David Gatten will be the protagonists of several special events including a workshop by the American re-animator on 'Narrative collage'.