Rohfilm

In Rohfilm the real image is destroyed. ‘It contains actual film collage and hand attacks upon the celluloid. Its physical presence is overwhelming.’ David Curtis ,1971 The effect of the assembled materials is enhanced by the precise, rapid rhythm of the editing and the gradually increasing volume of the soundtrack: the piece alternates between 8mm and 16mm film, as well between positive and negative images, in order to frustrate any attempt to appropriation the depicted for narrative purposes. ‘It’s not about film as a carrier of extra-cinematic statements,’ according to Birgit and Wilhelm Hein. Their material films belong among the trailblazing works of European avant-garde filmmaking of the late 1960s. They treat film as a creative medium, whose aesthetics are derived from the characteristics of the film material and the laws of human perception. They aim at the deconstruction of history as a basis for a particular understanding of society. (Berlinale)