Schmelzdahin
2021Weltenempfänger
Schmelzdahin
It is a wildlife film on flights of birds when glowing sunsets. On the soundtrack, a hum noise radio, which resembles the sound of a plane and that seems to criticize the human desire to fly, sometimes absurd when comparing this flight to the flights of birds. "WELTENEMPFANGER, marine and desert landscapes are filtered red, interspersed monochrome red, pure color serves fade, the birds fly into the red and yellow. The color is applied in water on the image which respects the framework, the existence of plan and the analog dimension. She unreal and alter but which works here is its color, not its figurales powers: it remains discreet, less virulent that the brilliant forms of disharmonic sequence that characterize the work of SCHMELZDAHIN
Weltenempfänger
Stadt in Flammen
Schmelzdahin
Film material is subjected to biochemical processes by burying it in the garden, storing it in a pond, or overheating it. The results of these natural processes of decay or aging are then copied back onto film and thus conserved in the state of their dissolution. - Lightcone
Stadt in Flammen
Aus den Algen
Schmelzdahin
In 1985, I threw a reel in the small pond of my garden. I think it was Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. I got it back a year later. This experiment is described in Aus den Algen. After the comments, we see the filmed material recovered. From the original copy, only the support survived: seaweed cultures have settled there, which now provide the content of the images.
Aus den Algen
Feuerland ist abgebrannt
Schmelzdahin
"A film that creates connections between image and text material and whose appeal lies in its fragmentary [...] destructive, strongly associative character; To see the film as a gloomy fantasy of doom, as a difficult poetic puzzle or simply as an idiosyncratic document of a bizarre fantasy is left to the viewer for himself." -Bielefeld Magazine
Feuerland is Burned Off
Krepl
Schmelzdahin
With Krepl, the political dimension of Schmelzdahin's research becomes clearer. The color scales the planes of scientific or colonial documentaries, horrible rubs that require these bodies scaled with the scalpel, these giant hamsters, these natives threatened by a camera that unsuccessfully repel. The inhuman mutilation of creatures determines chromatic pathology, color must be understood, not merely as a plastic liberation, but as a political gesture: it becomes the cinematographic path that today most often follows protest. According to a completely different visual syntax, we are not very far from the concerns that animate Criminals of Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi.
Krepl
Der General
Schmelzdahin
Der General defies narrative conventions. As a visual experience and thanks to the manipulations of color and the processing of images, Der General deploys its own logic and becomes a consistent whole in its visual expression. Plunged into a world of abstract fairy tale, traces of dreams, the nature and history of Germany converge and shape a timeless and limitless kingdom.
Der General
