+ INTRODUCTION BY STANLEY SCHTINTER (PURGE.XXX)
Please note that all of the films in this programme contain flashing and strobing images.
Celebrating the release of “Dirk Schaefer : Peter Tscherkassky, All the Soundtracks (2005–2021)” by purge.xxx, Sonic Cinema presents Peter Tscherkassky & Dirk Schaefer’s four collaborations to date: Train Again (2021); The Exquisite Corpus (2015); Coming Attractions (2010); Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (2005); as well as Tscherkassky’s classic of avant-garde cinema Outer Space (1999). All films will be projected in their original 35mm format.
The films of Austrian filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky have played a central role in the international reawakening of interest in avant-garde film. At the turn from a photographic to a digital culture of moving images, his work follows in the footsteps of Austrian masters Kurt Kren, Peter Kubelka, and Ernst Schmidt Jr. to create a thrilling filmic language that engages psychoanalysis and semiotics whilst exploring the physicality of the medium and its potential to overwhelm both visually and sonically. Tscherkassky’s working method – painstakingly hand printing found-footage material frame-by-frame in the darkroom – gives his films a deeply materialist sensibility, yet through the flickering fragments they also maintain cinema’s ability to shock and thrill. Dirk Schaefer’s sound design, which is intrinsically coupled to Tscherkassky’s images, constantly surprises with its chopped speech, repetitive musical refrains, arrhythmic noises, progressive buzzing and deep silences.
Programmed by Oliver Dickens.
Running order:
- Outer Space (Peter Tscherkassky, 1999, 10 min, 35mm)*
- Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (Peter Tscherkassky, 2005, 17 min, 35mm) **
- Coming Attractions (Peter Tscherkassky, 2010, 25’10 min, 35mm)**
- The Exquisite Corpus (Peter Tscherkassky, 2015, 19 min, 35mm) **
- Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky, 2021, 20 min, 35mm) **
Booking and further information - https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/sonic-cinema-presents-peter-tscherkassky/
