Peter Kubelka's Unsere Africareise

I saw this 12 minute gem of a film at a Documentary class that I am auditing. It was the fastest 12 minutes of any film viewing experience I have had in a long time... Before I knew it the film was over but the images and the sounds have lingered in my mind.

To be very brief and vague, it is about an African safari the film maker took with some rich Austrian businessmen who hired him to make this film as a sort of a trophy. 5 years later, a masterpiece was born much to the horror and chagrin of the businessmen who "produced" the film. They tried to beat up Kubelka at the premier (so goes the legend) but Kulbeka defended himself with his Judo knowledge!

I think that it was a strong statement against the colonization of africa; of the "white men" never really wanting to enter into other worlds that are so different from theirs but wanting to consume this "exotic, other" world.

On a cinematic level, I was very struck by his use of sound. I have been thinking a lot about the role of sound in cinema and the how it can be freed from its accompanying images; specifically juxtaposing sound and images that don't match to bring about another level of viewing experience.

I read, in Karel Reisz's Technique of Film Editing, that very often in the real world we hear but we don't see what we are hearing and that is very normal to us. In other words, our experience of sound is non-synchronous with our visual experience.

In this little film, Kubelka uses a lot of non-sync sound and his use of sound is very effective but disorienting. I was struck by when he decides to stop and start the sound (sometimes in the middle of a shot, sometimes with a cut of the image, sometimes it overlaps into the next shot).

I hope I get to see a celluloid version of this film again.

Wonderful Film Journal/Magazine from the UK

Happy New Year! It is one month and 10 days into 2009 and I am going to make a serious effort at becoming a blogger...

I recently dug out my 4 copies of the film magazine from the UK called Vertigo Magazine and I would highly recommend all you film lovers to take a look at it. The articles are often on non-mainstream films and video, on the intersections of cinema and literature or cinema and other fine arts. There is often a lot to ruminate on and it does help me with my own film making/film viewing process.

Let me know how you like it.