no comment - minimundus AUSTRIA

A picture of Austria by Austrians with selected public views taken from home movies from the fifties. A fictional private newsreel in TV news style, without comment, with original soundtrack material from the archives.

(Gustav Deutsch)


Using private material from the years 1953 to 1956, Gustav Deutsch makes no comment - minimundus AUSTRIA the scene of a memorable collision between two systems of news reporting and identity mediation. From a distance of over forty years, two paradigms, two stylistic blooms, race towards one another. The good old black-and-white newsreel meets side tracks of cable Euro News. Under the logo of "no comment", almost meditative impressions of all the conceivable places and crisis spots of the world stand purely for themselves. Although in both cases the pictures appear to be interchangeable at first glance, the soundtrack and subtitles are crucial. With the newsreels preference is given to using silent material synchronised with sensational commentary and lively music. With "Euro News", the intention is that the original (perfect) sound can say more than a thousand words.
Deutsch also synchronises, that is to say he underlays the, for experimental film, opulent opening credits with fragments of optimistic obligato scores. A small girl steps from behind the Arc de Triomphe in the Carinthian Minimundus (miniature world). With this single step whole perspectives are shifted, just as a little later orchestra sounds and model railways run a competitive race. And then Deutsch adds appropriate sounds to the silent material and thus subverts the character of the no comment clips in that he invests a falsification with naturalistic authenticity.

(Claus Philipp)