Film/Speaks/Many/Languages

21 fragments of a feature film made in India found in Casablanca re-worked in Vienna. Viennale trailer 1995, Vienna Int. Film Festival. 39 fragments of an Indian feature film with French and Arabic subtitles were found on Boulevard Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdallah. Of these, 21 were used to (re)constuct a one minute story comprising 4 parts which take place in 4 locations dictated by the original material: 1-horse-drawn carriage, 2-swimming pool, 3-petrol station, 4-bar. The thematic areas are 1-love, 2-jealousy, 3-crime, 4-business dealings. The length of each fragment is as found, the sequences re-ordered and separated from each other by a single monochromatic frame. Each of the four headings has a colour and a word assigned to it. The colours are as follows: 1-orange, 2-turquoise, 3-violet, 4-blue. The words: 1-Film, 2-Speaks, 3-Many, 4-Languages. The words (in white letters) cover the whole area of the screen, with the appropriate colour as background. The pieces are preserved as found and seen as a film object - the accumulated damage, dirt, sound track and perforation are all visible. (Gustav Deutsch) The painter Jackson Pollock was of the opinion that emotion was to be found in the material, in the colour itself, to which Coppola quipped with regard to film - "the emotion is in the emulsion". Cinema is necessarily bound by its material parameters. The staccato coloured inserts in this year´s Viennale trailer are not the only things to demonstrate this proposition. The found film pictures themselves reveal the plasticity of celluloid. Not even the perforations and sound track forming the side boundaries of the frame manage to detract from the unexpected and alien character of the images. For us the gesticulations are dazzling, the shirt collars protruding and the singing joyful and pathetic. Hearts burn with love and animate to theft. A one minute piece of colour, material, emotions, market and cultural cross-over. (Elisabeth Büttner) With 21 fragments (out of 39 in all) of an Indian feature film with French and Arabic subtitles, found in Casablanca, the history of one minute was (re)constructed. The film comprises four sections – the horse-drawn carriage, the swimming pool, the filling station and the bar – and looks at the themes of love, jealousy, crime and trade. (Int. FF Rotterdam)