Passages

A woman stands alone at the railing of a passenger liner and gazes into the blue. She will remember for us an arrival in New York, the walk of a young couple through China-town, the house boats in Shanghai and the excited children who gather round the visitor with the obscure picture machine. Beneath the pictures the sounds of distant lands can be heard and, in parallel, a montage of various memories and people unfolds. People who at some time either left or arrived in Vienna involuntarily. (...)

Lisl Ponger creates an imaginary map of the twentieth century on which the stories of emigration are engraved like well-worn tracks of occidental memory. The pictures, made by observant tourists, are revealed, in their tensile relationship to the soundtrack, as a post-colonial journey. A journey through exactly those countries which long ago have been shrunk together in space and time. Finally the wonderful neon signs of the "Hotel Edison" and "Radio City" remind one of the origins of this form of appropriation of the world, of the time of great expeditions, of Benjamin´s shop-windows and passages, and of the time when technical apparatus and means of transportation fundamentally altered the perceptions of modern man. (Christa Blümlinger)


In a sensitive gestus Lisl Ponger makes clear that, where images are concerned, neither hermetic memory nor immutable innocence exist and that found footage art requires no artificial manipulation to make the seam between privacy and hidden political agendas visible. (Robert Buchschwenter)


 

Orig. Title
Passagen
Year
1996
Country
Austria
Duration
12 min
Director
Lisl Ponger
Category
Avantgarde/Arts
Orig. Language
German
Subtitles
English
Credits
Director
Lisl Ponger
Narrator
André Mavazo, Ornella Goria, N. I. Amra P., Maria Förster, Ana Schey, Fred Wander, Vamira Vazquez, Katharina Beer, Le Dinhan, Adi Sitzmann
Available Formats
35 mm (Distribution Copy)
Aspect Ratio
1:1,37
Sound Format
mono
Frame Rate
24 fps
16 mm (Distribution Copy)
Aspect Ratio
1:1,37
Sound Format
mono
Frame Rate
24 fps
Digital File (prores, h264) (Distribution Copy)
Festivals (Selection)
1997
Rotterdam - Int. Filmfestival
Utrecht - Impakt Festival
Osnabrück - EMAF - European Media Art Festival
Potsdam - Festival des Europäischen Films
Pesaro - Film Festival
Teplice - Int. Art Film Festival Trencianske
Montecatini Terme - Mostra Int. FILMVIDEO
Austin - Cinetexas - Int. short film&video&new media festival
Neubrandenburg - dokumentART
Siena - Festival del Cortometraggio
Amascultura - Encontros Internacionais de Cinema Documental
Winterthur - Kurzfilmtage
Milano - DOC
1998
Triest - Alpe Adria Cinema - Film Festival
Chicago - Women in the Director's Chair
Dresden - Filmfest
Luzern - VIPER - Int. Film-,Video-& Multimedia-Festival
Jerusalem - Film Festival
Helsinki - MUU Media Festival
Stuttgart - Filmwinter, Expanded Media Festival
Oberhausen - Int. Kurzfilmtage
Aix-en-Provence - Festival Tous Courts
Leeuwarden/NL - Noordelijk Film Festival
1999
Istanbul - Int. Short Film Festival
Nyon - Dokumentarfilm Festival
Ankara - Int. Film Festival
Regensburg - Kurzfilmwoche
Viareggio - Europa Cinema & TV Film Festival