Mundum et hoc quodcumque nomine alio caelum appellare libuit, cuius circumflexu degunt cuncta, numen esse credi par est, aeternum, inmensum, neque genitum neque interiturum umquam. huius extera indagare nec interest hominum nec capit humanae coniectura mentis. Sacer est, aeternus, immensus, totus in toto, immo vero ipse totum, infinitus ac finito similis, omnium rerum certus et similis incerto, extra intra cuncta conplexus in se, idemque rerum naturae opus et rerum ipsa natura
Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, Liber II.*
Yesterday I went to see a screening of Gustav Deutsch's films at ENSB-A (the Paris Art School). It was a pretty interesting evening, and they screened a selection of his series Film Ist. From Film Ist. 1-6 (1998) were taken the first three chapters (I, Movement and Time; II, Light and Darkness; III, An Instrument), then from Film Ist. 7-12 (2002) the first two ((I, Comic; II, Magic) and finally from the astounding feature Film Ist. A Girl & a Gun (2009) there was the IV Act (Thanatos).
It was an interesting screening and especially the talk afterwards was incredibly good. Gustav Deutsch (as most Austrian filmmakers, I have to say) is able to talk about is work on both a technical level and on the theoretical one, and makes a Q&A with him far better than the average.
I sketched this portrait of him while he was introducing the screening, then reworked it a bit at home, in order to add color. I decided to put a quote by Pliny the Elder because of one of the questions during the Q&A. It was Emeric de Lastens who pointed out that the series Film Ist, although composed entirely of archival footage, it is not a Film History but it's closer to some sort of Natural History, which is a remark I can agree with.
(December 2012)
*English translation (by John Bostock and Henry Thomas Riley, 1855) here (the quote is from the first paragraph).