The Formative Years I-II

Seven early 16mm films by Heinz Emigholz reconceived as an installation work on BluRay. The Formative Years (I) contains five rigorously formalist exercises, Schenec-Tady I-III (1973/75/76), Arrowplane (1974) and Tide (1975), while (II) features two tacit approaches to a more narrative cinema: Hotel (1976) and Demon (1977). What unites them is Emigholz’s attempt to systematically explore, explain, experience and redefine (for himself and others) the basics of cinema’s possibilities. Schenec-Tady I is the starting point for all things Emigholz: a single cinematic motion (a 360° pan) created through single-frame photography, in-camera edited, silent, black-and-white. By Demon, Emigholz uses black-and-white and colour as well as sound. Here, three people in different rooms with different sound qualities recite Mallarmé’s poem in three different languages, edited into each other word-by-word.