Berlin Horse assembles a poetic carousel of images which overlap and transform into a brightly colored finale of two sequences — one of a horse running in circles, being exercised in a village near Hamburg, the other an early Edison newsreel of horses being led from a burning stable. Both were visually transformed and colored on the printer at the London Film Makers Cooperative. The music was made for the film by Brian Eno who at the time was exploring, in sound, a similar use of loops.
The first part is made from a small section of film shot by me in 8mm color, and later re-filmed in various ways from the screen in 16mm black and white. The second part is made by treating the black and white newsreel – The Burning Stable (1896) – in the same way.
There was no initial plan to the work – it developed as I responded to the processes of transformation – rather in the manner of a Jazz improvisation on a theme. It is a kind of visual poetic drama. (Malcolm Le Grice)
“A color-poem of immense lyricism” (Michael O’Pray)
There exists a single-screen and a lesser-shown two-screen version of the film. In its expanded form, the second screen has a black and white version of the film, stressing the color transformations for the viewer and highlighting the color print process that has taken place.