Milena Fina on the Phone

The vibration of the images is already evident in the handwritten title. Running throughout this film is a basic trembling, a cinematic fibrillation. Am Telefon Milena Fina (Milena Fina on the Phone) shows close-ups of faces and hands, in softly fading light here and there, two people at windows, natural and urban scenes, roof landscapes, and façades of houses that appear to be moving like cardboard backdrops. The two figures that haunt the rooms become artificial in the machine rhythm of the frame-by-frame animation. They approach each other, but further contact fails.

The jitteriness of the images is created by a constant change of perspective, by a constant shift in the point of view: each shot is seen from gently varying position that change at lightning speed. The 16mm camera, mounted on a rail, takes exactly two images from each position before it is readjusted – always two frames on the left, two frames on the right, at a frequency of four to twelve frames per minute. As usual, the filmmaker Albert Sackl appears as his own protagonist; whereas in earlier works he always entered into a silent dialogue with the camera, a partner is now also present: Milena Fina, who is mentioned in the title. The dual principle underpins this film: two exposed frames from two viewing positions at two people.

Sackl says he likes to expose himself to “strict concepts and a self-created, artificial constraint”. His work has to “arise out of a mechanical process”. Am Telefon Milena Fina confronts external and internal worlds: a love story, perhaps, in a previously unimagined form. In view of the deliberately shaken images, one is also reminded of the good vibrations once euphorically sung about by the Beach Boys, which, as we know, they rhymed with excitations. Excitement follows from movement. (Stefan Grissemann)

Translated by John Wojtowicz