Arnulf Rainer | |
---|---|
Directed by | Peter Kubelka |
Release date |
|
Running time | 7 minutes |
Country | Austria |
Arnulf Rainer is a 1960 Austrian experimental short film by Peter Kubelka, and one of the earliest flicker films. [1] The film alternates between light or the absence of light and sound or the absence of sound. Since its May 1960 premiere in Vienna, Arnulf Rainer has become known as a fundamental work for structural film. Kubelka released a "negative" version, titled Antiphon, in 2012.
Arnulf Rainer uses only solid black or white film frames, and its audio alternates between white noise and silence. As with his two previous films Adebar and Schwechater , Kubelka arranged Arnulf Rainer as a "metric film", constructed from fixed durations analogous to musical note values. [2] The film is broken into 16 sections, each one lasting precisely 24 seconds (576 frames). The sections are composed of "phrases" that span 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 16, 18, 24, 36, 48, 72, 96, 144, 192, or 288 frames. All but one of the sections move from longer phrases to shorter phrases. [3] The film creates suspense with the prolonged elements and action with the faster rhythms it uses to alternate between elements. [4]
The rapid, intense patterns of light and sound often produce illusory effects. Interplay between the audio and visual components can make it challenging to distinguish which patterns are being seen and which are heard. Persistent afterimages produce the appearance of swirling colors. [5] Viewers may experience a transparent halo off-screen, particularly during the transitions between sections. [3]
After his clients' negative response to Adebar and Schwechater, Kubelka moved from Vienna, Austria to Stockholm, Sweden. [6] His friend, painter Arnulf Rainer, commissioned him to make a film about Rainer. [7] Before Kubelka was able to purchase film for the project, he laid out patterns on pieces of paper. [4] He made the film out of two strips of film stock—one transparent and one black—and two strips of magnetic sound—one with no signal and one with continuous white noise. [8] Kubelka named the film after Rainer as thanks for sponsoring the project and as a "compromise" in the event that he was disillusioned with the result. [7] Arnulf Rainer premiered May 1960 in Vienna, where most of the audience walked out of the screening. Kubelka has stated that after the premiere, he "lost most of [his] friends because of Arnulf Rainer". [6]
Since its release, Arnulf Rainer has become Kubelka's best known work, embodying his adoption of the frame as the basic unit of cinema instead of the shot. [9] The film is known as a fundamental work for structural film. Critic P. Adams Sitney identified it as one of "only three flicker films of importance", alongside Tony Conrad's The Flicker and Paul Sharits's N:O:T:H:I:N:G. [10] Arnulf Rainer is now part of Anthology Film Archives' Essential Cinema Repertory collection. [11] Kubelka has declined to digitize the film, stating that "cinema is a completely different medium which cannot be imitated by the digital medium." [4]
Kubelka revisited Arnulf Rainer with his 2012 film Antiphon. Antiphon is a "negative" of Arnulf Rainer which switches black for white and silence for sound. [12] Kubelka described the films as "yin and yang". [4] He presented it in an installation titled Monument Film. Monument Film consists of Arnulf Rainer, Antiphon, the two films projected side-by-side, and the two films superimposed.
Monument Film was designed as a film installation that could not be reproduced digitally. Under ideal settings, the superposition of the two films would be a white screen with continuous noise. However, variations in the projectors and speakers reveals the films' common structure. Kubelka has described it as "a duet for projectors." [4] Monument Film premiered at the 2012 New York Film Festival. [13]
Frame rate, most commonly expressed in frames per second or FPS, is typically the frequency (rate) at which consecutive images (frames) are captured or displayed. This definition applies to film and video cameras, computer animation, and motion capture systems. In these contexts, frame rate may be used interchangeably with frame frequency and refresh rate, which are expressed in hertz. Additionally, in the context of computer graphics performance, FPS is the rate at which a system, particularly a GPU, is able to generate frames, and refresh rate is the frequency at which a display shows completed frames. In electronic camera specifications frame rate refers to the maximum possible rate frames could be captured, but in practice, other settings may reduce the actual frequency to a lower number than the frame rate.
An underground film is a film that is out of the mainstream either in its style, genre or financing.
A movie projector is an opto-mechanical device for displaying motion picture film by projecting it onto a screen. Most of the optical and mechanical elements, except for the illumination and sound devices, are present in movie cameras. Modern movie projectors are specially built video projectors.
Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, particularly early ones, relate to arts in other disciplines: painting, dance, literature and poetry, or arise from research and development of new technical resources.
A film leader is a length of film attached to the head or tail of a film to assist in threading a projector or telecine. A leader attached to the beginning of a reel is sometimes known as a head leader, or simply head, and a leader attached to the end of a reel known as a tail leader or foot leader, or simply tail or foot.
Paracinema is an academic term to refer to a wide variety of film genres out of the mainstream, bearing the same relationship to 'legitimate' film as paraliterature like comic books and pulp fiction bears to literature.
Anthology Film Archives is an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema. The film archive and theater is located at 32 Second Avenue on the southeast corner of East 2nd Street, in a New York City historic district in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan.
Structural film was an avant-garde experimental film movement prominent in the United States in the 1960s. A related movement developed in the United Kingdom in the 1970s.
Paul Jeffrey Sharits was a visual artist, best known for his work in experimental, or avant-garde filmmaking, particularly what became known as the structural film movement, along with other artists such as Tony Conrad, Hollis Frampton, and Michael Snow.
Wavelength is a 1967 experimental film by Canadian artist Michael Snow. Considered a landmark of avant-garde cinema, it was filmed over one week in December 1966 and edited in 1967, and is an example of what film theorist P. Adams Sitney describes as "structural film", calling Snow "the dean of structural filmmakers."
P. Adams Sitney, is a historian of American avant-garde cinema. He is known as the author of Visionary Film, one of the first books on the history of experimental film in the United States.
The Flicker is a 1966 American experimental film by Tony Conrad. The film consists of only 5 different frames: a warning frame, two title frames, a black frame, and a white frame. It changes the rate at which it switches between black and white frames to produce stroboscopic effects.
Peter Kubelka is an Austrian filmmaker, architect, musician, curator and lecturer. His films, few in number, are known to be carefully edited and extremely brief. He is known for his 1966 Unsere Afrikareise, and for other very short and intricately-edited films.
Zorns Lemma is a 1970 American structural experimental film by Hollis Frampton. Originally starting as a series of photographs, the non-narrative film is structured around a 24-letter classical Latin alphabet. It remains, along with Michael Snow's Wavelength and Tony Conrad's The Flicker, one of the best known examples of structural filmmaking.
Hapax Legomena is a seven-part film cycle by American experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton. The complete cycle premiered in November 1972.
The Austrian Film Museum is a film archive and museum located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Peter Konlechner and Peter Kubelka in 1964 as a non-profit organization.
Schwechater is a 1958 experimental short film by Austrian filmmaker Peter Kubelka. It is the second entry in his trilogy of metrical films, between Adebar and Arnulf Rainer.
Our Trip to Africa is a 1966 Austrian avant-garde short film by Peter Kubelka, originally commissioned as a travel diary documenting a wild game hunt. Kubelka used intricate editing strategies to produce a work about anti-colonialism.
All My Life is a 1966 American experimental short film directed by Bruce Baillie. It shows a continuous shot of a fence, soundtracked by Ella Fitzgerald's 1936 debut single "All My Life". Film critic P. Adams Sitney identified it as an early example of what he termed structural film.
Adebar is a 1957 Austrian avant-garde short film directed by Peter Kubelka. It is the first entry in Kubelka's trilogy of metrical films, followed by Schwechater and Arnulf Rainer. Adebar is the first film to be edited entirely according to a mathematical rhythmic strategy.