Night Sweat

The sky´s blue hanging above the black of a forest. Lightning flashes over a clearing. And the white ball of the moon with dark spots. These are the three suggestions that make Night Sweat an examination of a visual effect´s technical aspects.
The film was shot in analog Hi-8 video. Its poor resolution, especially in precarious light conditions, occupies the foreground in the first and third chapters. At the same time the musical accompaniment matches perfectly, with scattering beats, dubby wisps of sound and intensifying distortion effects. In the zoom of this part´s final shot the pixelated blue of the night resembles the pandemonium of bacteria under a microscope: The image exists behind the documentary appearance.
In the concluding part the picture "trembles," then condenses into an apparently familiar representation of the moon, which is in fact conveyed only through various media devices. After the camera zooms back, the horizontal layer of blocks turns out to be an outer edge of a bright circle.

Night Sweat is a reflection on perceptions and appearances that have been prefigured by media, though not without involving its audience emotionally. This is especially clear in the second chapter, in which the stroboscopic flashes of light at night are accompanied by a snarling soundtrack of noise. The elevated view of the moon collides in a consciously brutal way with the arsenal of motifs taken from horror and splatter movies.

(Thomas Edlinger)

Translation: Steve Wilder


Peter Kubelka once declared that cinema was more powerful than reality because it can recreate a lightning flash 24 times a second; Night Sweat invents a digital tempest that obliges us to reread Immanuel Kant’s texts on the sublime, since this time the lightning and its flash come from human fabrica- tion, without ever losing their striking effect.

(Nicole Brenez)

Orig. Title
Night Sweat
Year
2008
Country
Austria
Duration
9 min 40 sec
Category
Avantgarde/Arts
Orig. Language
No Dialogue
Downloads
Night Sweat_01 (Image)
Night Sweat_01 (Image)
Night Sweat_01 (Image)
Credits
Director
Siegfried A. Fruhauf
Cinematography
Siegfried A. Fruhauf
Sound
Christoph Ruschak, Jürgen Gruber
Supported by
BKA. Kunst
Available Formats
35 mm (Distribution Copy)
Aspect Ratio
1:1,85
Sound Format
Dolby stereo
Frame Rate
25 fps
Color Format
colour, b/w
Digital File (prores, h264) (Distribution Copy)
Festivals (Selection)
2008
Graz - Diagonale, Festival des Österreichischen Films
Linz - Crossing Europe Film Festival
Hamburg - Int. Kurzfilm-Festival & No Budget (Honorable Mention)
Vila do Conde - Festival Internacional de Curtas-Metragens
Zagreb - 25fps Film & Video Festival
Montréal - Festival International du Nouveau Film et de la Video
Istanbul - Int. Short Film Festival
Cork - Int. Film Festival
Telluride - TIE International Experimental Film & Video Festival
2009
Rotterdam - Int. Filmfestival
Wien - Fulframe Festival
Wroclaw - WRO-International Media Art Biennale
Stuttgart - Filmwinter, Expanded Media Festival
Hong Kong - Int. Film Festival
Paris - Némo Festival
Osnabrück - EMAF - European Media Art Festival
Berlin - Transmediale (Festival for digital art)
Nijmegen - Go Short Film Festival
Neubrandenburg (D) & Szczecin (PL) - dokumentART Film & Video Festival
Copenhagen - cph:dox, Intl Documentary Film Festival
Paris - Festival des Cinemas Differents Collectif Jeune Cinema