Ever since the Lumière brothers, the movie camera has been used countless times to capture the arrival or passing of a train, but also of its robbery or derailment. Peter Tscherkassky's found-footage film Train Again (2021) brings together numerous such scenes and camera angles in order to unfold the elementary vocabulary of cinema and at the same time demonstrate the beauty of analog film, which is revealed in the artistic adaptation of historical film models.
The screening will be supplemented by Tscherkassky's short film L'Arrivée (1998) and excerpts from a current interview film in which the film artist explains his working methods. As a bonus program, Trans-Europ-Express (1966) by and with Alain Robbe-Grillet will be shown. Film on-Train off!
Trans-Europ-Express
A movie producer, director and assistant take the Trans-Europ-Express from Paris to Antwerp. They get the idea for a movie about a drug smuggler on their train and visualize it while taping the script.
Supporting Film: Train Again
Cinema is supposedly on its last legs. And so Tscherkassky rattles through film history as if there were no tomorrow. All the shimmering and clattering of the composition-ravaged action smash TRAIN AGAIN rears up against the decline in meaning of the once so innovative seventh art. A methodically galloping hussar ride, a crash course in frenzied standstill, an apocalyptic collapse of images, a catastrophic thriller - and the crankshaft of old cinema groans eternally. If you don't have a screw loose, you'll gladly let it roll over you.
Supporting Film: The Arrival
The first of Peter Tscherkassky's Cinemascope trilogy of short films is a fragmented glimpse of images pulsating with chaotic rhythm as they fight white margins for room in his palette. Mirrored frames being split by white margin and trying to reassemble again like the poles of a magnet, a train approaching station and colliding with itself in white-hot blistering chaos.
Supporting Film: Pacific 231
An engine moves from the roundhouse to a track where it couples with several passenger cars. At 2:10 in the afternoon, it starts a trip out of the station through the countryside to its destination. The film consists of a montage of shots, some close up, of the engine and its gears and wheels. With the accompanying ambient sounds and an orchestral score, the emphasis is on the engine's power and speed. Parallel lines of multiple tracks, telephone wires, and trees confirm a careful composition.