saw at melbourne film fest:
Film is. A Girl & A Gun, Austria, 2009, directed by Gustav Deustch. The title of this film has been adapted from a quote from D.W. Griffith – “A film is a girl and a gun”. In order to describe this film to you I will quote from the MIFF programme (page 10):
“Weaving together a hypnotic mash-up of archival film from the first five decades of cinema, Deutsch splices together ethnographic films, war footage, science documentaries, explicit pornography and 1930s feature films to concoct a kaleidescope visual essay in five parts about love, sex, violence and death.”
This was a very powerful film to view. Extracts from films from the aforementioned genres are cleverly juxtaposed against each other while being aptly accompanied by a soundtrack made up of contemporary and classical music as well as music from some of the original 1930s films used. The sometimes surprising grouping of various film extracts threw certain qualities of those films into stark relief – the beautiful grainy quality of the monocoloured films, the charged quality of the performances of the actors, the sensuality inherent in natural images such as ferns unfurling or lava flowing. A word of warning – this is not a film for the sexually squeamish or prudish. The pornography shown is hard core and extremely explicit footage of penetration is shown. There is even a mercifully fleeting glimpse of bestiality. This is not meant to be a criticism of the film – I just mention it because not everyone is comfortable with viewing sex in public. I don’t think that the film maker intended the porn to make anyone overly horny or disgusted – he uses this pornographic footage to show other facets of the human condition (for example vulnerability, abuse of power, intimacy). The film is erotic, but, for me, the erotic charge came from footage showing actors performing scenes of flirtation fully clothed. The only minor quibble I had was that the film felt a little too long. However, over all, I thought that this was a pretty spectacular cinematic experience.
|
