Gustav Deutsch
to be continued
November 1 to 3, 2024
November 2 is the fifth anniversary of the death of our long-time friend and project partner Gustav Deutsch (1952-2019). To mark the date, we will present three consecutive days of programs shedding light on different aspects of Deutsch's multi-faceted work as an artist – and indeed "only" his work as a creator of moving images, since he was also active, among other things, as an architect and visual artist. He was however feted around the world primarily as one of the most original representatives of the found footage film, which we will celebrate with a marathon of his splendid Film ist. cycle. The marathon will be preceded by examples from Deutsch's noteworthy video work and, on opening night, previously unreleased and barely shown super 8 films in new digital versions.
The super 8 films are also an example of the important holdings from the field of the Austrian and international avant-garde, which the Austrian Film Museum has preserved for decades. Made outside industrial and commercial contexts, many of them are valuable and culturally significant unique copies. With the support of the Austrian government as part of the funding program Kulturerbe digital and using reversal originals, negatives and prints, we have been able to make 2K digitizations of as-yet-unpreserved works from Deutsch's archive that were left with us. These small gauge works encompass 63 short films and were explored in collaboration with his long-term partner Hanna Schimek.
A special challenge involved taking into account how Deutsch worked and his presentation practice. Some of these small gauge films never took a final form and were constantly re-worked over the decades. Others served more as filmic notes. Some films were presented at screenings, however this body of work remains mostly unknown. Under the descriptive title Nach links nach rechts nach oben nach unten und rundum (To the left, to the right, above, below and around) two thematically-curated short film programs put together with Schimek's support are invitations to discovery.
In a talk with the co-founder of Medienwerkstatt, Manfred Neuwirth, we will turn to the early video works which Deutsch made in the early 1980s with the recently deceased architect Ernst Kopper (1945-2024): Produced at Medienwerkstatt, these "films from Lower Austria" are stunning documents of the local video movement and testify to an idiosyncratic "cultural sociological" approach to life in the provinces. This will be followed by a rarity demonstrating Deutsch's development from the documentary to the conceptual: Originally exhibited as a video installation, the compilation Internationaler Sendeschluss (1992) was also designed as a work in progress, another line tying into his ever-expanding found footage work and its ongoing discovery of new approaches, which he began with Schimek in the mid-1990s.
Deutsch's engagement with found footage culminated in the Film ist. trilogy, which playfully investigates the endless riches of the medium with a passion for exploration: Film ist. 1-6 (1998) focuses on scientific films as a birthplace of cinema, Film ist. 7-12 (2002) collects discoveries from fairs, music halls and studios, and Film ist. a girl and a gun (2009) investigates one of cinema's main subjects – the battle of the sexes – as a "drama in five acts." Engagement with film is an inexhaustible topic: At the end of this work stands to be continued, a motto that we have borrowed for this series. Because the Film Museum will continue to engage with Gustav Deutsch's work. (Michael Loebenstein, Christoph Huber, Lena Stötzel, Johannes Minas / Translation: Ted Fendt)
In collaboration with Medienwerkstatt Wien
November 2 is the fifth anniversary of the death of our long-time friend and project partner Gustav Deutsch (1952-2019). To mark the date, we will present three consecutive days of programs shedding light on different aspects of Deutsch's multi-faceted work as an artist – and indeed "only" his work as a creator of moving images, since he was also active, among other things, as an architect and visual artist. He was however feted around the world primarily as one of the most original representatives of the found footage film, which we will celebrate with a marathon of his splendid Film ist. cycle. The marathon will be preceded by examples from Deutsch's noteworthy video work and, on opening night, previously unreleased and barely shown super 8 films in new digital versions.
The super 8 films are also an example of the important holdings from the field of the Austrian and international avant-garde, which the Austrian Film Museum has preserved for decades. Made outside industrial and commercial contexts, many of them are valuable and culturally significant unique copies. With the support of the Austrian government as part of the funding program Kulturerbe digital and using reversal originals, negatives and prints, we have been able to make 2K digitizations of as-yet-unpreserved works from Deutsch's archive that were left with us. These small gauge works encompass 63 short films and were explored in collaboration with his long-term partner Hanna Schimek.
A special challenge involved taking into account how Deutsch worked and his presentation practice. Some of these small gauge films never took a final form and were constantly re-worked over the decades. Others served more as filmic notes. Some films were presented at screenings, however this body of work remains mostly unknown. Under the descriptive title Nach links nach rechts nach oben nach unten und rundum (To the left, to the right, above, below and around) two thematically-curated short film programs put together with Schimek's support are invitations to discovery.
In a talk with the co-founder of Medienwerkstatt, Manfred Neuwirth, we will turn to the early video works which Deutsch made in the early 1980s with the recently deceased architect Ernst Kopper (1945-2024): Produced at Medienwerkstatt, these "films from Lower Austria" are stunning documents of the local video movement and testify to an idiosyncratic "cultural sociological" approach to life in the provinces. This will be followed by a rarity demonstrating Deutsch's development from the documentary to the conceptual: Originally exhibited as a video installation, the compilation Internationaler Sendeschluss (1992) was also designed as a work in progress, another line tying into his ever-expanding found footage work and its ongoing discovery of new approaches, which he began with Schimek in the mid-1990s.
Deutsch's engagement with found footage culminated in the Film ist. trilogy, which playfully investigates the endless riches of the medium with a passion for exploration: Film ist. 1-6 (1998) focuses on scientific films as a birthplace of cinema, Film ist. 7-12 (2002) collects discoveries from fairs, music halls and studios, and Film ist. a girl and a gun (2009) investigates one of cinema's main subjects – the battle of the sexes – as a "drama in five acts." Engagement with film is an inexhaustible topic: At the end of this work stands to be continued, a motto that we have borrowed for this series. Because the Film Museum will continue to engage with Gustav Deutsch's work. (Michael Loebenstein, Christoph Huber, Lena Stötzel, Johannes Minas / Translation: Ted Fendt)
In collaboration with Medienwerkstatt Wien
Related materials
For each series, films are listed in screening order.
