Kopierwerk

The cinema is a machine. Kopierwerk testifies to that, lets itself be carried by industrial rhythms, and in doing so, negotiates the analogue era, whose end meant also new beginnings, creative deviations: as complement to digital mass culture, taking place before our eyes is a movement largely freed from the pressure to generate a profit, a niche revolution of sorts in analogue media.
First, the newspaper printing process is illuminated in old, silvery glimmering black-and-white images: the reproduction of propaganda and enlightenment from the ghost of factory work. A spectacular montage sets off the very “shock effect” that Walter Benjamin so enthusiastically described. Stefanie Weberhofer, protagonist in the young Viennese analogue film scene, lays out Kopierwerk as a self-reflective 35mm work compiled from found materials, trailers, advertising spots, and splinters of feature films. Already the printing prologue is fed from very different sources, the texture gives it away. From the factory, it moves to the wide-open space of Hollywood fantasies:  Meryl Streep, Warren Beatty, and Jim Carrey handle newspapers and projection apparatuses; the meandering analogue photography is for the stars and the aura of the moment, indiscriminately capturing what is momentarily able to be captured.  
Film history, however, is not merely a glorious extravagance of prominence, but also one of material, a culture of secret pictures and messages found as printed inscriptions and instructions, as countdowns, codes, and numbers in the filmstrips themselves. The “highly dangerous” collective experience cinema can trigger panic, can do its work of destruction. But the film reels continue to turn. Kopierwerk thus mutates to an abstract game with the cinema’s physique, a dance of letters and the copier generation’s gray veil. In strictly manual production, for three years Weber worked on her film, which tells of the radical remodelling of the film industry and the (digitally multiplied) afterlife of analogue film images in the avant-garde. (Stefan Grissemann)

Translation: Lisa Rosenblatt

Orig. Title
Kopierwerk
Year
2020
Country
Austria
Duration
7 min
Category
Experimental
Orig. Language
No Dialogue
Downloads
Kopierwerk_01 (Image)
Kopierwerk_02 (Image)
Kopierwerk_03 (Image)
Credits
Director
Stefanie Weberhofer
Concept & Realization
Stefanie Weberhofer
Music
Marko Sulz
Sound Design
Marko Sulz
Available Formats
35 mm (Distribution Copy)
Aspect Ratio
1:1,37
Sound Format
stereo
Frame Rate
24 fps
Color Format
b/w
DCP 2K flat (Distribution Copy)
Aspect Ratio
1:1,37
Sound Format
5.1 surround
Frame Rate
24 fps
Color Format
b/w
Festivals (Selection)
2020
Ann Arbor - Film Festival
Santiago de Compostela - Curtocircuito
Wien - VIS Vienna Shorts
Seoul - EXis (Experimental Film- & Videofestival)
Graz - Diagonale, Festival des österreichischen Films
Cork - Int. Film Festival
Viennale - Vienna Int. Film Festival
2021
Nantes - Le plein de Super
Dresden - Filmfest
Edinburgh - International Film Festival
2022
Bratislava - Febiofest