Tourniquette

Static landscape film with one recurring action.tekst IFFR 1992:Tourniquet is an extraordinary landscape painting in time and motion. The makers used the tourniquets in the Limburg farmland as an instrument in making the film. These turnstiles allow people to pass, but stop the cattle. The chance location of the tourniquet (nine different ones were used in the film) determine the panoramic view. By each tourniquet a complete circle was filmed in all four seasons. This approach based on a strictly formal point of departuredoes however provide an amount of material which can equally be regarded as a documentary. It provides a picture of the location in different conditions and the lengthy gaps between shooting also help reveal the changes in the landscape.Jochems and Hamelberg edited the numerous panoramas they collected into a kind of musical composition of images, in which sound also plays an important role. The iron turnstiles make noises as they are turned which were painstakingly recorded and used in the film. ‘Each turnstile is different, crooked or level, stiff or fluid in rotation, and if you’re lucky sounds like a complex composition in contemporary music,’ according to the makers. ‘There are a few melodious ones which provide a wealth of lower and upper tones, sharp and hollow sounding noises in an apparently random series to the sensitive ear.’The tourniquette itself, as the camera mount, remains out of sight.