Elena Brys + Femke Gelas: In Time

In Sidney J. Furie’s feature film The Entity (1982), Barbara Hershey is violently attacked by a presence with no physicality. Before his masterful and playful reworking of this original footage in Outer Space (2000) and Dream Work (2002), Peter Tscherkassky already utilized it for Get Ready (1999).

From an idyllic scene at the sea, slowed down like a memory or a dream, Tscherkassky moves to a speedy car driving by night.

Found footage stream-of-consciousness montage that reflects the fragmentary, chaotic and destructive nature of the mind. About systems and susceptibility, about perception and refuge.

“Cut word lines — Cut music lines — Smash the control images — Smash the control machine — Burn the books — Kill the priests — Kill! Kill! Kill!” (William S. Burroughs, The Soft Machine)

Psychiatrists Convention, January 14, 1966: Velvet Underground​’s first public appearance. A dance party at Stephen Shore’s apartment follows the concert footage.

What is a home? The receipt of an official state letter from Lithuania starts a questioning of identity, of feeling at home and the experience of time. We go back and forth between two places you call home. In the film, we search for answers with images. Slowly, time and memories seep into the present and change our perception.

Super 8‑to-16mm blow-up

Footage is repeatedly re-filmed – workers at a construction site, an incineration plant, industrial graveyards, an antenna-like object resembling an illegible and continually collapsing cipher. Elaborate multiple exposures render an unambiguous reading of the images impossible, let alone their integration into a fictional space. This drives Tscherkassky to a point of no return – the filmstrip stops or ​‘freezes’ at the projector gate (hence the title), and burns up.

“The idea of the ​“frozen picture” (freeze frame) taken seriously.” (Peter Tscherkassky)

“The visual background material for Freeze Frame consists of shots taken in a ​“redevelopment area” in Berlin, i.e. old buildings shortly before their demolition, filmed through a loo window which repeatedly slides in front of the houses like a shutter. These pictures are set in contrast to pictures of visitors and participants at a neighborhood street festival, the kind where the city attempts to conceal itself behind a poor imitation of village charm.” (Peter Tscherkassky)