In his three part series Film ist. Gustav Deutsch, the maestro of found footage filmmaking, investigates the endless wealth of the medium. Cinema’s two “birthplaces”, the scientific laboratory and the fairground, are of special interest to him. Deutsch travels to film archives worldwide where he researches and excavates clips from obscure films then reassembles them into montage sequences that create compelling visual narratives.

Whereas the first part, Film ist. 1-6 consists almost exclusively of sequences from existing scientific films, part two Film ist. 7-12, addresses questions of magic, the circus, and the fantasy aspect of cinema traced back to Georges Méliès. In the final installment, Film ist. a girl & a gun, Deutsch adroitly assembles a precisely constructed, mesmerizing ebb and flow of images from a variety of genres, including scientific, erotic, fiction, and actuality films, into extraordinary montage sequences divided into five acts: Genesis, Paradeisos, Eros, Thanatos, and Symposion.