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IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE EYE
With the financial support of: trailer l photos l presskit l press l web l kino l tv l bio l filmo l dvd >> International
Distribution: Sixpack Film Theatrical Release:
Award for The Most Innovative Documentary Special Mention of the Jury
Linoleum Festival of Contemporary Animation & Media-Art Moscow, Russia
With its 45 minutes of abundant avant-garde research,
In the Beginning was the Eye is the figurehead of the Director's
Fortnight in Cannes 2003. It took five years to produce this cinematic
UFO essentially made up of hundreds of postcards. At times a dreamlike
vision, at times political, philosophical and even culinary, the film
is technically perfect. The stunning sound and visuals and the hypnotic
editing ensure that you don't get bored for a second.... Imagine a portrait of Austria created by Jan Svankmajer
and David Lynch: This will give you an idea of Bady Minck's fantastic
film work entitled In the Beginning was the Eye. When a writer
investigates Austria through the image presented by postcards, the landscapes
around Erzberg and Salzburg province become something between a dream
and a nightmare. And the words on the back of the cards seep into the
scene as whispers. These are terrible and painful texts, written by unknown
hands over the course of time. Tension develops between picture and text,
culture and landscape... Bady Minck re-evaluates irreverent worlds of images in
the form of thousands of postcards whose ardently kitschy views of Austria
are re-animated by the avant-garde filmmaker. Her cinematic narrative
of a poet’s search for images provides the framework for a critical reconquest
of an idyllic Alpine landscape. Using breathtaking montage work and elaborate
film technology, Bady Minck penetrates deep into the sultry colour of
the postcards without succumbing to their camped-up charms. Dans son film, Bady Minck entreprend une réévaluation
des univers iconographiques profanes. La réalisatrice d’avant-garde
"ré-anime" en quelque sorte plusieurs milliers de cartes
postales et leur représentation d’une Autriche rendue kitch à
l’extrême. Dans son récit filmé, ce sont les aventures
d’un poète collecteur d’images qui servent de cadre narratif à
la reconquête critique de l’Arcadie alpine. Grâce à
un montage prodigieux et à l’utilisation de techniques cinématographiques
complexes, Bady Minck pénètre le chromatisme saturé
des cartes postales sans jamais succomber à leur charme suranné.
The masterpiece of this year´s Quinzaine des Réalisateurs
in Cannes was undoubtedly Bady Minck´s In the Beginning was
the Eye. The film starts by gazing out of an eyelid, which opens
and closes, turning us into voyeurs, ready to manipulate objects and facts.
What follows is a very interesting work of remembering. Events of the
past, most notably of the Nazi era, discreetly emerge from their shadows.
The filmmaker covers the tracks: we don´t know if it´s the
poet who remembers, the texts on the postcards are being read out loud
or if the director herself is commenting on the past. Neutral images and
ideas of "home" are interwoven with suppressed recollections.
The irony with which the film deals with stereotypes is reminiscent of
the films of Syberberg and his way of playing with clichés. We
will surely hear from Bady Minck again! Chez Bady Minck, la course opposant le mot à l’image
se solde par une large victoire de l’image : les prises de vues en pixilation,
les fondus enchaînés et l’intégration du langage comme élément
musical d’une composition logo-iconographique enivrante génèrent
une œuvre cinématographique qui prend les attentes et habitudes
du spectateur à rebrousse-poil. Au commencement était
le Regard est un film sur la narration et la mémoire, sur
la fugacité du langage et des images, sur les tours que nous joue
la perception sensible une réflexion philosophique sur l’image
comme reproduction, la réalité, l’identité, la nature
et la civilisation. In Minck’s race of word against image, the image is the
obvious winner: Single frame shots, dissolves and language employed as
a musical element in a fast-paced composition of words and images are
combined to create a film which goes against conventions and expectations.
In the Beginning Was the Eye is a film about story-telling and
remembering, the volatility of language and images, and about the tricks
played on us by our senses - shortly, a philosophical consideration of
reproduction and reality, identity, nature and civilization. The most subtle and strange film shown at the IFDA Documentary
Festival Amsterdam tells the tale of a poet who is pondering the eternal
questions of origin and meaning like a modern Faust. Just like the picture
postcards the film has two sides: behind the idealised image on the front
hides a "Heil Hitler" while voices whisper to us stories from
a different kind of Austria. Forestill deg Jean-Pierre Jeunets univers slik vi kjenner
det fra Delicatessen og Den fabelaktige Amelie fra Montmartre parret med
Røyksopps postkortvideo til "Eple", og du vil i det minste
ha dannet deg en visuell idé om hvilken fantastisk opplevelse Bady
Mincks film er. Dette er en film som sprenger alle tradisjonelle genrebåser:
Kortfilm, eksperimentfilm, animasjon, dokumentar? Ingen begrep er fyllestgjørende.
En frenetisk fantasi med røtter i virkeligheten, kanskje, eller
som kritikeren Marc Ries beskrev det: "Et komplekst verk lokalisert
mellom arkeologi og hedonisme". "In the Beginning was the Eye"
er i alle fall en film om det å se, og om måter å se
på. Dikteren Bodo Hell prøver å bryte løs fra
sin verden av ord og trenge gjennom bildet av det østerrikske fjell-landskapet,
slik det presenteres på turistvennlige postkort. Men jo flere avbildninger
av alpelandskapet både han og vi får se, jo mer og jo mindre
virkelig synes det å være. Imagine Jean Pierre Jeunet´s universe as we know
it from "Delicatessen" and "The Fabulous Destiny of Amelie
Poulain", paired with Røyksopp´s videoclip "Apple"
that´s made up entirely of postcards – then you get an idea
of what a fantastic visual experience Bady Minck´s film has turned
out to be. A film that transcends all traditional genres: short film,
experimental film, animation, documentary - none of these words is a sufficient
description. A frenetic phantasy with roots in reality, or as critic Marc
Ries has put it, a complex oeuvre located between archaeology and hedonism.
In the Beginning was the Eye is a film about vision and different
ways of seeing and looking at things. The poet Bodo Hell tries to break
out of his world of words and into the Austrian alpine landscape as it
is represented on tourist-friendly postcards. But as we get to see more
and more images of mountains and alpine scenery, this landscape starts
to seem concurrently more and less real. Bady Minck's avant-garde film breaks through the conservative
norms of documentary filmmaking. The film reexamines a world of banal
images on thousands of landscape postcards that depict the Austrian Alps
and the Salzburg province. A film that surprises both the eye and the
mind at every turn - it's about memory, language and the senses that deceive
us. In the Beginning was the Eye is the "Alice Through the
Looking Glass" of documentary avant-garde films, which will leave
you overwhelmed. In the beginning was the word, it says in the Bible.
Filmmaker Bady Minck does not believe this. She has made a beautiful work
about the tension between two forces in Film: the word and the image.
Themes run through the film about the relationship between man with nature,
between appearance and reality. Cinematographically, and with style, this
unconventional, alienating film is astonishing. In the Beginning was the Eye is a work too strange
and beautiful to be explained in words. Bady Minck's film of brilliant
spirals and frames leaves us tumbling. To the last frame, it teaches us
something very important: wonder at the mechanics and magic of images. In the Beginning was the Eye is a film about
narration and remembering, about the volatility of language and image
and the tricks our sensual perception plays on us. Lurid postcards and
filmed images of the exact locations are melded and morphed into one another
until it becomes impossible to determine reality from brightly rendered
tourist trap. Digital technology is employed to blur the lines and create
impossible movements and transformations. Multiple exposures, time-lapse
and slow motion assume an anomalous role that functions in ways completely
contrary to standardised expectations and habits of seeing. Taking the
rigidity of postcard motifs as a starting point, the film engages in a
programme of revitalisation, a re-animation that fills static people and
things with life. Inclasificable. No le cabe otro adjetivo a este pequeño
y delicioso ensayo sobre los paisajes alpinos y los turistas que por allí
descansan del trajín del año. Bady Minck trabaja con material
descartable - viejas fotos y postales - y construye con él un monumento
al kitsch turístico, utilizando toda la tecnología digital
disponible como si se tratara de un sistema de rejuvenecimiento para recuerdos.
El resultado es hipnótico y absurdamente bello, al tiempo que nos
descubre que los poblados y ciudades también tienen un alma. Unclassifiable. No other adjective fits this little and delicious essay
on Alpine landscapes and tourists that rest thereabout from the year's
commotion. Bady Minck works with disposable material - old pictures and
postcards - and builds with it a monument to touristic kitsch, using all
digital technology available as if it were a rejuvenating system for memories.
The result is hypnotic and absurdly beautiful, at the same time as it
reveals to us that towns and cities also have a soul. Using the most delicious ingredient, old post cards, this film concocts
something beautiful that brings a new flavor to a historical subject.
There is a place for creative historical documentaries, isn't there?! A film that makes us question the way in which we view cinema, art and
life. It ponders the idea of time in relation to the film image - are
the images dead or do they have a special life? In the Beginning was
the Eye is a boldly experimental vision that examines our relationship
with culture and image, taking us on a thoughtful journey that never fails
to amaze or inform. The camera acts as a winking eye spying into a poet’s
workroom. Books are stacked to the ceiling, and the poet moves agilely
between typewriters and shelves, leafs through books or, like Alice, enters
a looking-glass. Bodo Hell cuts a restless figure, a man of the word setting
off on a journey into the images or behind them. Dominated by its artificial
gaze from the very beginning, this film becomes even more technically
complex in its middle: In a rhythmic montage, innumerable postcard motifs
rain down upon the viewer, which the protagonist then enters as if they
were real landscapes. La caméra se fait passer pour un œil qui scrute
le bureau d’un poète où les livres s’entassent jusqu’au
plafond. Le poète, vif comme un écureuil, va et vient entre
machines à écrire et étagères, feuillette
des livres ou, comme Alice, traverse un miroir. Bodo Hell incarne cet
homme de lettres fébrile qui entreprend un voyage à travers,
voire derrière, les images. Si le début du film se caractérise
déjà par son regard artificiel, c’est dans la partie centrale
que l’œuvre prend toute son ampleur grâce à une démarche
technique encore plus élaborée : un montage rythmique qui
bombarde le spectateur d’une multitude de motifs de cartes postales que
le poète- randonneur parcourt comme un décor réel.
In the Beginning was the Eye creates a typology
of movement which talks from the very "heart" of the cinema
- multiple exposures, single frame techniques, time-lapse and slow motion
have assumed an anomalous role, that functions in ways completely contrary
to standardized expectations and habits of seeing. A poet, locked into his den, in a cocoon of books and
leaves, left at the mercy of words whispering to him from out of nowhere,
or somewhere. On the empty pages of a book a mountain formation forms,
prompting the poet and ourselves to embark on a journey through landscapes,
landscapes whose history is revealed to be a bizarre layered object consisting
of numerous postcard pictures superimposed on each other. Bodo Hell, the
visual traveller, becomes part of this breathtakingly precise spatial
composition, becomes a picture on a postcard and thereby the object of
observation for the viewer's eye, the eye that Bady Minck navigates through
the artificial "naturalness" of arranged Austrian landscapes in a virtuoso
way. At the end of the journey the poet stays behind as his own (photographic)
representation, two-dimensional, and helplessly at the mercy of a nature
that, being a "matter of view", radically evades him... Nok en gang har vi med surrealisme
med opphav i det østerrikske Amour Fou Filmproduktion GmbH å
gjøre. Denne gang er det ikke en franskmann, men en kvinne fra
Luxemburg som står bak kamera og manus. Bady Minck heter hun og
opererer i grenseland mellom filmkunsten og andre kunstarter. Hvis du
kan tenke deg et portrett av Østerrike laget av Jan Svankmajer
og David Lynch, inspirert av DR. CALIGARIS KABINETT, finner du Bady Mincks
retning og prosjekt for "I BEGYNNELSEN VAR BLIKKET". Dette er
Østerrike sett gjennom bilder fra gamle postkort med motiver fra
Erzberg og Salzburg. Og disse motivene blir både drømmer
og mareritt. Once more we are dealing with surrealism mady by Austrian
filmproduction Amour Fou. This time, instead of a Frenchman, the director
and writer is a woman from Luxembourg. Her name is Bady Minck and her
work is situated on the borderline of film art and other art forms. Imagine
a portrait of Austria created by Jan Svankmajer and David Lynch, inspired
by "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". This will give you an idea
of the direction Bady Minck's project is taking. This portrait of Austria
is formed by the images of old postcards as the landscapes around Erzberg
and Salzburg province become something between a dream and a nightmare. Biblia uczy, ze na poczatku bylo Slowo. Bady Mink ma
wlasna koncepcje poczatku wszechrzeczy. Stworzyla piekny film o napieciu
pomiedzy narracja slowna a obrazem. Pisarz Bodo Hell, glówna osoba
w filmie, przy pomocy pocztówek przyglada sie historii Austrii.
Z kolekcji 15 000 starych pocztówek autor wykorzystuje 1800. Watki
dotycza relacji pomiedzy czlowiekiem i natura, pomiedzy forma przedstawiania
rzeczywistosci i nia sama. Widoki na pocztówkach sa czesto "retuszowane".
Brzydkie zabudowania i drogi o duzym natezeniu ruchu sa "wymazywane"
z idealnego obrazu Austrii. Krótkie teksty wysylane bliskim kilkadziesiat
lat temu tworza kontrapunkty z widokami z tych samych pocztówek.
Pocztówki przelatuja przez ekran, kamera wchodzi w miejsca, które
byly niegdys fotografowane, zapisane tresci odczytywane sa brzmiacym chwilami
wrecz zlowieszczo szeptem. Oryginalny styl i wyjatkowy temat zdecydowanie
wyrózniaja ten niesamowity film. Bodo Hell struggling with the dimensions: The writer
breaks out of his world of words and tries to penetrate the surface of
Austrian picture postcards in order to get into the very body of the landscape.
He slips into a postcard picture, wanders through a labyrinth of cliché
pictures, and embarks on a high-speed race through mountains and valleys
at 160 postcards per minute. At the end Bodo succeeds in imagining a landscape
himself, and even in entering it; but during his leap into the body of
the landscape he loses his corporeality - the poet is reduced to the flatness
of a two-dimensional figure on a picture and is left at the mercy of the
wild landscape. |
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