Heart core

The filmic gospel according to Peter Kubelka.

By Michelle Silva

IN A VISUAL culture increasingly permeated by digital imagery, the disintegration of the exhibition and experience of cinema appears imminent. Peter Kubelka reminds American audiences of the physical presence of cinema as an inimitable medium. With a filmography that is only 63 minutes long, avant-garde master Kubelka (born in Austria in 1934) has progressed film by his metric and metaphoric montages, which are attentive to tactile qualities and mechanics that are exclusive to film. Since the 1950s, Kubelka has remained a committed proponent of film as a pure medium, leaving an indelible mark on international film history and culture, establishing the Österreichisches Filmmuseum in Vienna, then cofounding Anthology Film Archives in New York City in 1978.

Surrendering to his personal vision, Kubelka has subverted several commissions to create his cinematic masterpieces. Frame-to-frame manipulation, displacement of sound and image, and repetition are all recurring aspects of his film work. After a 26-year hiatus, he has re-emerged with a new film, Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth), and has toured and lectured in several cities throughout the United States to an overwhelmingly positive reception.

Bay Guardian: The survival of film as an exhibition medium is definitely an issue right now. People who are teaching cinema are projecting DVDs instead of the actual work. As a major founder of film culture, how do you feel about the future of cinema?

Peter Kubelka: I do not allow my films to be transferred to video and shown in digital form, which means that if film goes under, I will go under with it. But I don't do this in order to go under [laughs]. I'm absolutely convinced cinema as a classic medium will stay on, because it has a heart core which cannot be replaced by any other medium.

BG: All the media you work in – film, cooking, music – articulate mathematics and time.

PK: The editing of my metric films is less arithmetic than geometric, which means I have a body contact to film, I count the frames by taking the material in my hands. There is the possibility of bringing in a body intelligence, and not just a mathematical or literary intelligence which comes from outside and does not really touch the medium. Film is culture, and it is a bending, transparent, three-dimensional object.

BG: People relate to your films on a very basic human level, a physical level. I'm wondering how carefully you consider that physical experience.

PK: I very much consider it. This is an archaic medium where the public comes to look through the head of the author. It's interesting that we were not so much aware of the physical beauty of cinema before television and before the digital medium.

BG: Right now, museums often want to show filmmakers' work on a DVD on a loop in a gallery, with ambient light rather than darkness, so people can come and go as they please.

PK: I've just now been invited to a big exhibition in Germany that will juxtapose various media. They want to represent cinema on DVD, and I'm refusing to participate on the grounds that they do not give cinema an adequate possibility to stand up against other art forms. When you show film on a [digital] screen in a half-lit atmosphere, it is like representing a painting with postcards. DVD is fine, and the digital medium will develop and find its soul and its heart's core. But the imitation of cinema is definitely not what the digital medium can do, should do, and will do.

BG: I want to ask about the editing vocabulary you developed for your film Unsere Afrikareise [Our Trip to Africa, 1966].

PK: Unsere Afrikareise is an artificial natural film [laughs]. In nature, every event that moves produces sound; in my film, all events that go on in the visual meet sounds against which they form a metaphor and speak. Unsere Afrikareise is completely in sync, but with events that were not redundant. When you see a gunshot go off and you hear the noise of the shot, that's redundant. I can juxtapose a different sound in order to create a metaphor.

The working process was a long one – I worked for five years on the film, and I cataloged every minute detail in the material, visual and acoustic. Then when I sat at the editing table, I had my image on the right side and my sound on the left, and I could work like a poet, putting together my vocabulary, trying out new possibilities.

BG: Some of your films – for instance Adebar [1957], Schwacheter [1958], and Unsere Afrikareise – have been sponsored or commissioned. Were there points in the process when you were conflicted?

PK: To put it very simply, I have stolen all my films. I [always] accepted the commission trying to do what these people wanted, and then when I started working, I went the way the film demanded me to go, disregarding the consequences. In the long run I was shown to be right, but this was very difficult for me, because I have several times lost all my social standing. I had to leave the country [Austria], and for many years I was penniless and sought after by lawyers.

BG: Based on your experience, do you have advice for young artists and filmmakers today?

PK: My advice is that if you can do otherwise, do not become an artist. If you have to become an artist, then you must do what you really believe in and not make any compromises. Only if you do what you really believe in will your message be clear.

BG: Can you tell me about the making of your new film, Dichtung und Warheit [Poetry and Truth]?

PK: It is a film with material which I have not shot myself. It's fossil material, leftovers of commercial production. It's not found footage, but carefully hunted-for footage [laughs]. The title is the title of Goethe's autobiography. In film acting, you have a moment when the camera already runs and the actor is showing he or she is not acting yet. Then comes the changeover, when he or she starts to act. This was the point of departure for this film. But then I found out [that] before one starts to act, one also acts, because we, like other animals, constantly act in order to survive. The form of the film again changed, and I worked under the auspices of an archaeologist, to enable future generations to pose questions to this material which I cannot pose yet.

I found what I articulated in my metric films is also found in these commercially produced filmstrips. I didn't even have to make surgical interventions in order to once again have a metric and cyclic film.

BG: It's a brilliant film, a study of humans. It's a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.

PK: I attempt for my films to be, at the same time, funny and sad. It's just like our existence: We cry and we laugh, and it's great and tragic at the same time.

BG: The United States is a very commercialized country, so sometimes [audiences here] might think social commentary is the most obvious aspect [of Dichtung und Warheit].

PK: It's one point, but it's not all of it. I always refuse to accept these generalizations about what the US does. The great thing about the US is that it allows so many minorities to live and to speak out and to exist. America saved my life. It was here that I found a reception and people who understood and wanted and needed my work. Although I now also have success in Europe, it really started in America, and I will never forget that.

BG: What was your first experience with film?

PK: I was approximately eight years old, and I lived in a small village in the country, and there was a traveling cinema that came [to town]. They introduced a pudding powder – Dr. Edgar's Pudding Powder [laughs]. I would sneak into this dark room full of peasant women who were fascinated by this new pudding. I was fascinated that there was this black room, and this moving image in front, when I managed to push myself through the many people to see. For me, the first experience was not about content – not the story, not a great film – but about the medium itself.

'Peter Kubelka: Films and Lectures.' "Metric Films and Poetry and Truth," Thurs/20, 7:30 p.m., PFA Theater, 2575 Bancroft, Berk. $4-$8. (510) 642-0808, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. "Metaphoric Films with Poetry and Truth," Sun/23, 7:30 p.m., Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Screening Room, 701 Mission, SF. $5-$8. (415) 978-2787, www.sfcinematheque.org.