Cinema bruciato

A true IFFR cult figure, filmmaker Clemens Klopfenstein has been a steady presence at the festival since Hubert Bals’ days. This year, premiering his quasi-autobiography, Cinema bruciato.

In the film, Klopfenstein portrays a metaphorical renovation of the burned-down church of his past in and with cinema. As tools, he merely has his computer and files of his own films, as well as masses of faces long gone and places razed from memory. One drifts deliciously with Klopfenstein through a super-edit of his own oeuvre, removed from established modes of this type of filmmaking and instead functioning in an intimate and poignant expression, where fleeting gestures can unleash avalanches of unexpected memories.

The digital realm develops its particular form of melancholia in a very analogue setting, amidst trees and pastures where 35mm or 16mm would feel appropriate, as materials that will decay in kind. Cinema won't die. But with the move from analogue to digital, something has irretrievably changed. Cinema bruciato holds onto the old smell.

– Olaf Möller