films by klaus telscher

“Telscher’s rich, original, witty, subtle, and partly cryptic work is characterized by a flair for deliberate technical imperfections, for the obsessive use of fragments of all kinds of music, and for eclectic references to the history of film and photography. His last film, La Reprise, appeared in 1995. Since 1996, Klaus Telscher has been confined to a wheelchair..“ (Noll Brinckmann) “In 1978 Telscher began working on his films, a time when the euphoria of the sixties had faded away, and few remained captivated by the passing ideals of experimental film. But this may well have created free space for a new generation of avant-garde filmmakers in the eighties. Alongside numerous predominant contemporaries, Telscher was able to found a distinctive personal style. His early films are ‘experiments’ in many respects, reminiscent of the structural film of the sixties. When Telscher works with the flicker effect, when his camera looks at the reel with its single frames and perforation holes, all this restages earlier gestures. In this first period, Telscher oriented himself via his predecessors, utilizing their language of forms in order to develop his feeling for film as a material. He began to make truly independent work with Entwicklungsstücke, where many characteristic features of his work can already be felt. While lasting thirty minutes at the premiere, the film has later been trimmed to a quarter of an hour. Often Telscher’s films are ‘works in progress,’ subject to revision over the years. His reflexive regard of the camera’s framing — playing with the slanted camera or having the camera’s view openly acknowledged by its subject, makes us aware of both film and maker, of the inherent subjectivity in these perspectives. His use of music here is also characteristic, both managing to emotionally underscore the image while providing an ironic commentary on it.(…) In all of his work Klaus Telscher transports emotions. ‘Film’ is already being pointed at by the outer shape which moves in a slow turning surveillance of its own nature. This allows for a very personal expression, an expiation of the private sphere, where the invention of unbeckoned feelings may find new shapes in emulsion. In his interrogation of erotic relations, history and perspective his view remains resolutely personal, managing to stage each in a fashion which remains open to the spectator’s own histories, their own truths cast in the inimitable light of the machine. (Johannes C. Tritschler, with additions from Noll Brinckmann, W. Roth and Alf Bold)

Curated and introduced by Karola Gramann and Heide Schlüpmann. Many thanks to EMAF and Heide Schlüpmann for providing the analogue prints for this program.