quoting:
So whokilled the Underground film? Well to some extent probably artists like me whostressed the Avant-garde, Experimental concept of film and now of video and digitalcinema, stepping away from the Underground's transgressive roots. But also thetransgression changed. In contemporary western culture, many of the life-style conflictshave disappeared even if the underlying political inequalities and repressions remain.Outside the political arena it is increasingly difficult to find content thatshocks. Mainstreamcinema and television exploit all forms of sexuality and violence on a daily basis.The media and news corporations have made us immune spectators. But even withinour own experimental film history, as well as more aesthetic, abstract orpoetic directions,the underground film's broad counter-cultural trajectory has itself sub-divided intospecific territories: feminism; gay identity; issues of race and ethnicity; orsocio- politicaldocumentary. So whatof "You killed the Underground Film, or [the real Meaning of] Kunst bleibt. . bleibt .. " [the title of Wilhelm Hein's recent work] and Wilhelm Hein'scontinuing work as afilm-maker, artist? This long, and still growing, work has no stylisticconstraints - it can goin any direction it likes or Wilhelm Hein likes. Or maybe even where Wilhelm does notlike. It is still an underground film where anything - any thought, any idea,any image -can and must be accepted. This includes the unthinkable, the unsavory, thetaste- less orthe trivial. As with earlier works like "Manson, Biggs, and Hein",(made with Birgit)Wilhelm continues to find his subjects - resolutely points his camera outsidethe conventionaland acceptable. His attitude is not didactic - he is not dealing with"issues" - he has areal engagement with the people he films. His films remain raw, his nerves and sinewsremain exposed and the works expose us beyond our expectations and desires. And theyare good and engaging works of cinema. He has resisted academic engagement andremains abrasive in his relationship with the institutional world of art. Hehas never splitthe elements or themes of his work into their sub-categories and continues toexplore politics,sexuality, psychology, image, aesthetics, movement and temporality as integrated andinseparable elements of his life and art. He reminds us, we other film-makers,that our jobas artists is to explore any conceivable subject without compromise. MalcolmLe Grice March 2,2012 Jenseitsder Trampelpfade: Fachblattfür Fotografie Film und andere Kunst Heft 14 apublication of Wilhelm Hein and Annette Frick
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