She Had Her Gun All Ready, Vivienne Dick, courtesy of Oberhausen Short Film Festival

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”[1]

Given its relative youth, there is a remarkable amount hidden in or obscured by the various histories of cinema. The Oberhausen Short Film Festival plays a unique role in helping to excavate and bring to light former manifestations of cinema. Taking a cue from the famous LP Hartley quote, the curators of the From The Deep: The Great Experiment 1898-1918 at this year’s festival introduced their programme as follows:

“Cinema from the era before the First World War is truly a missing continent. [...] The entire richness and diversity of this ‘cinema before cinema’ was in a way hidden from us until the end of the 1980s. But thanks to the efforts of various film archives and research by historians, the treasures concealed in the depths have re-emerged and come to the surface little by little.”[2]

Curator Mariann Lewinsky and filmmaker Eric de Kuyper have assembled the first large scale programme at Oberhausen to explore cinema prior to the festival and the short films that it has championed in many forms since its inception in 1954. But what is there to discover in this period? Important pioneers such as the Lumiere Brothers, Georges Méliès, Mitchell and Kenyon or Edwin S Porter are widely known and later figures such as Louis Feuillade or D.W. Griffith are celebrated as originators of narrative forms still at play today.

But the curators argue that to solely understand this period through the prism of what follows, namely the narrative feature film, is to dismiss the sheer variety of films produced and the unique ways film was often exhibited. The work from these years of cinema has languished under dismissive labels, most typically that of ‘primitive’ cinema. The core argument behind From the Deep was that everything from the types and manner in which films where made to the ways they were shown, are wholly distinct from the cinema that has largely obscured it since the 1920s.

The ten programmes at Oberhausen offered remarkable glimpses of this distinct film culture, rich in the range of forms and techniques employed and diverse in the variety of subjects. Films ranged from Italian comedian’s Tontolini discovery of the restorative magic of cinema in Tontolini Is Sad (Italy 1911) to fascinating insect life in The Carrot Caterpillar (1911, France) rendered in striking colour to news as re-enactment in The Revolution In Russia (1905, France) and images from the outposts of the colonial Empire in Exploitation and Coffee Farming (1909, France). The sheer diversity of this cinema, and the absence of the familiar ways to understand the films, makes these works both tantalising and elusive. As soon as you think you have a grasp on this period, a film appeared that turned everything on its head, such as the Western Burning Heart (1912) filmed by Jean Durand on the French coast or the remarkable demonstration of hysteria by as masked patient under the guidance of Doctor Camillo Negro in Neuropathology (1908, Italy).

This is not a period prior to industrial cinema and one of the distinct ways the films can be understood is in relation to different companies that produced or commissioned them. Exhibitors (who ran venues ranging from circuses to fairgrounds) or technical companies produced films as well as still existent media giants such as Pathe and Gaumont whose work permeated the programmes. But there were also works from many long forgotten and mysterious organisations such as Eiko-Film founded in Germany around 1912, which produced the work of director and star Max Mack, including the self-reflective The Unemployed Photographer (Germany 1912) which sees Max stumble into the new position of cameraman, to the risqué Austrian company Saturn founded by photographer Johannes Schwarz to produce stag-films and promote his own collection of photos of naked women.

In amongst these films various directors work is distinguishable, such as the French master of the silent serial and the surrealists’ favourite filmmaker Louis Feuidalle, whose Policemen as They Are Presented To Us – Policemen The Way They Really Are (France, 1908) is remarkable for its reflection on cinematic stereotypes and the amazing catholic fantasies of Spain’s Segundo de Chomón[3] such as Mysterious Flames (Fr, 1908), in which a devil dances amongst fireworks and hellish hand painted flames. These years of cinema where promiscuous and rife with remakes, copies and imitations which makes the largely uncredited works (even those attributed to certain directors are not definitive) all the more fascinating and mysterious. As the curators stated:

“As a whole, the production is anonymous, serial, without stars, without masterpieces. No short film of these years contains its entire meaning, for an important part of this meaning was inherent in the function that the film took in the overall programme of a cinema presentation.”

Given the emphasis placed on the screening context it felt like a missed opportunity that the programmes in Oberhausen where generally assembled along conventional lines and all accompanied by the same pianist (occasionally to dire effect). Works such as Neuropathology we were told were presented as part of a medical lecture, or dance films where presented as part of a cabaret performance. If this is a ‘cinema before cinema’ then surely contemporary exhibitions need to pay as much attention to the forms of presentation as is obviously given to the delicate and rare film material.

This period offers insight into the society at the beginning of the century, largely through many of the films most remarkable moments which are incidental details, like the casual brutality displayed when unloading cattle from a ship in the travel film Au Maroc: Tanger (France, 1908, Pathe), to the expressions of children in Turin posing for a photographer, some delighted some traumatised in Children’s Beauty Competition (Concorso di bellezza fra bambini a Torino) (1909, Italy, Aquila). Yet some of the most problematic and as such intriguing works were buried in programmes, making it difficult to establishing a critical relationship with these works, especially as the curators seemed more determined for people to marvel at the richness of these works and enjoy their inventions.

Concorso di bellezza fra bambini a Torino, photo: Film Institute Netherlands

Fascinating films such as Exploitation and Coffee Farming (1909, France, Pathe) provide an insight into colonial attitudes and although beautifully filmed Types of Indians and Ceylonese (1912, France, Eclair) is disturbingly prescient of the eugenics movement. Many of these works reveal the social discrepancy of the time without any pretence at equality. Filmmakers such as Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, or Vincent Monnikendam[4], have explored the brutality at play in these early films and crucially shown that there is no neutral way to present or approach them. These films reveal attitudes at the foundation of  Western society with unapologetic frankness, even in such apparently innocent films as Cosmopolitan Dances (1907, France, Pathe), a cabaret trick film where the two dances perform in costumes from around the world, which magically change throughout the film. To appreciate this film solely on the level of its energy, vitality and its simply yet ingenious trick, is to disregard the complex processes of role-playing and how the film reveals that the technology of cinema marks the ambiguous beginning of our globalised culture. If we are to take these films seriously we need to extend them the same critical rigour we would any era of cinema, as the films prove again and again they are far from innocent.

No More New Waves

Oberhausen played host to another archaeology of cinema’s past in the brilliant No Wave 1976-1984 programme, which offered a surprisingly complimentary parallel to From the Deep. Curated by Christian Höller[5], and later expanded with feature films by Jim Jarmusch, Amos Poe and Bette Gordon among others at the Austrian Film Museum[6], the series surveyed the underground largely super8 film movement in New York with works by Vivienne Dick, Beth and Scott B, James Nares, David Wojnarowicz and many others. Jim Hoberman announced the arrival of the movement in Village Voice in 1979, declaring it a ‘new wave of content-rich, performance-oriented narrative films.’[7]

Working in parallel and often in collaboration with No Wave musicians such as Lydia Lunch, James Chance and Arto Lindsay, the disparate group of filmmakers where united by their rejection of any movement and their radical opposition to the films, both experimental and commercial, made in New York before them. As opposed to the formalism of experimental film as much as the art scene in the late 1970s, their works employed an unpolished ‘on the street verité’[8]. Works were shown in host of non-conventional spaces, often at rock clubs, or abandoned apartments, or most famously in and around Times Square for a show organised by CoLab[9] in 1978. Given their opposition to the existing institutions, the activity of this disparate group of artists gravitated around various projects, such as the artists collective Colab, and the production of unofficial newscasts for cable television and publishing X Magazine.

Given the involvement with the New York music scene and the later integration of various filmmakers into independent film circuits, No Wave films have never been entirely forgotten[10], even if they are sometimes mistaken and overshadowed by the later more sensational yet in comparison less innovative Cinema of Transgression[11] movement lead by Nick Zedd, Richard Kern and Lydia Lunch (one of the key links between the two movements). Works such as L.E.S (USA, 1976) by Coleen Fitzgibbon, provides an invaluable portrait of the Lower East Side in the late 70s, despite its laconic, stoned Chris Marker-esque narration, it bares striking witness to the utter desolation of the area, including a remarkable scene where children recall a fire that burnt down their apartment block or James Narres’ Waiting For the Wind (USA, 1982) which includes a kinetic scene in which his apartment appears to be hit by a tornado. The posturing, the disregard for brevity and lack of self-censorship in these works, allows the time, place and people to impose itself in a remarkable fashion. Even works like Men In Orbit (USA, 1978, John Lurie) which basically consists of John Lurie and Eric Mitchell, failing to convince as astronauts as they succumb to fits of hysterical laughter, can be seen more in the genre of silent film actualities, fascinating in the same way that the children in the film from 1907 struggled to pose for a photographer.

James Narres made the link to the silent period explicit at the festival, stating that he was conscious that they were living and working where early single reel films were produced before the formation of Hollywood. Indeed it in New York on 23rd April 1896[12] that the first projected movie show was held in America. As well as often making films in single reels of Super8, which were largely edited in camera and then joined together, the films also shared an itinerant exhibition history with early cinema with works shown almost anywhere but conventional cinemas. In early cinema we can gain unparalleled insight into the late Victorian period, in the films from the No Wave period there’s an insight into a long gone New York, captured prior to the redevelopment of Manhattan, revealing in particular the empty shell of the lower East Side, as if it were a former war zone.

Many of the works transcended their fascination as records of the time, such as David Wojnarowicz’s beautiful black and white film Heroin (USA, 1981) showing posed drug casualties across the city or the wonderful films of Vivienne Dick, one of the few filmmakers who has maintained and developed a strong body of work following this period[13]. She Had Her Gun All Ready (USA, 1978, Vivienne Dick) is a vivid psychodrama, played out like a movie serial, strikingly shot and staged amongst the architecture of New York, including a climatic strangulation on one of Coney Islands roller coasters. The films of Scott B and Beth B are some of the most rigorously constructed and provocative of the period, subverting media and political oppression. G-Man (USA, 1978) is particular strikingly combines newspaper reports of terrorist attacks with re-enactments and restagings of dialogue drawn from an interview with head of NYC’s bomb squad and telephone conversations from Beth B’s day job as a telephone receptionist for an escort service. Finally one of the real discoveries of the programme, and a film which stood out for its idiosyncrasies and disarming formal play was Andrea Callard’s 11 through 12 (USA, 1977) inspired by the I Ching, the film is constructed around a series of deadpan addresses to camera, trying to understand how to measure and quantify the world. The directness and unrestrained attitude of films in both programmes, testify to cinemas h, both as a witness and expression as well as to the hidden depths still to be discovered in cinemas many past lives.

Footnotes:
[1] The quote is from the first line of L.P. Hartley’s novel The Go-Between published in 1953

[2] ‘ The Deep’ catalogue essay by Eric de Kuyper and Mariann Lewinsky, 56 Internationale Kurzefilmtage Oberhausen, 2010

[3] A selection of Segundo de Chomón’s films can be seen on UbuWeb

[4] In particular Mother Dao The Turtlelike (Netherlands, 1995) which is constructed from the former Dutch East Indies

[5] Christian Höller is the editor and co-publisher of the magazine springerin – Hefte für Gegenwartskunst

[6] No Wave: New York 1976-84, June 4-14

[7] Jim Hoberman, No Wavelength: The ParaPunk underground, Village Voice, May 21, 1979

[8] Jim Hoberman, ibid

[9] Colloborative Projects Ltd and information on the Times Square Show

[10] See for example the recent online exhibition at LUX featuring various films and Nick Abrahams
Ana Cory-Wright’s documentry on the movement (which blurrs figures from No Wave with Cinema of Transgression) No Age New York

[11] Various Cinema of Transgression films as well as Nick Zedd’s manifesto for the movement can be seen online on UbuWeb

[12] The first theatrical exhibition was organised by Vitascope, Edison’s projection company and largely managed by Edwin S. Porter. The screening took place on April 23 1896 at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall in Herald Square, New York City

[13] For details of Vivinne Dick’s other work see the excellent DVD and accompanying booklet ‘Between Truth and Fiction: The Films of Vivienne Dick’, published by LUX and The Crawford Gallery, Cork

About the Author: George Clark is a curator, writer and artist. At the Independent Cinema Office between 2006 and 2008 he managed a range of touring projects including: ‘Essentials: The Secret Masterpieces of Cinema‘, ‘Artists & Icons’ and ‘The Artists Cinema 2006′. Independent curatorial projects include ‘The Unstable States of…’, ‘Without Boundaries: European Artists’ Film and Video’ and the retrospective ‘The Cinema of Miklos Jancso’ [co-curated with Travis Miles]. He has written for Art Monthly, Afterall, Sight & Sound, Senses of Cinema and Vertigo Magazine among other publications. He recently collaborated with the artist Beatrice Gibson on the script for a film commissioned by the Serpentine Gallery and Camden Council.