Militia Early Morning

Militia Early Morning Scheugl’s first and hardly known film revels in an abundance that takes no detour over emptiness. An arsenal of formal elements and practices of montage appreciated by the avant-garde is spead out: the seperation of image and sound, the flickering of short cuts, the artistic grip on the image itself, the fragmentation into narrative particels, the translation from writings into images, the nervous urban view stopped by nothing, the colors loosened from the objects and becoming signs, a system of interruptions and remification that puts linear time out of joint.
The story that composes the film has dismissed classical dramaturgy long ago. It collects observations from the edges of town, shows curiosity for faces and everyday life, intersperes plot elements of intrigue and poaches in pop culture. In this film Scheugl is not a noble dogmatist of form and material but rather a player of time for whom film is a reservoir of cruises and reconnaissance.

Dexterously Scheugl changes the registers from tentative discovery to violent shock, from open space to arranged pose. Ficition is for him not the look that infects objects but rather a model for the insight that reveals reality.

Elisabeth Büttner: Poetik der Fülle. Wegmarken zu Hans Scheugl und seinem Film Miliz in der Früh. In: Hans Scheugl. Die Fotografien des Filmemachers. Katalog. Wien-Museum 2012