FILM SCREENING | FILM IST. a girl & a gun
7:00 PM & 9:00 PM
Directed by Gustav Deutsch
Documentary, 93 minutes, Austria, 2009.
U.S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE RUN!
As part of the Anthology Film Archives’ ongoing collaboration with the Austrian Cultural Forum, Anthology presents a week-long run of FILM IST. a girl & a gun, the culmination of Gustav Deutsch’s breathtakingly ambitious series of found-footage works. Scouring moving image archives throughout the world, Deutsch has assembled a vast collection of silent-film imagery, much of it buried in archival vaults for decades. From this incredible range of material, Deutsch has composed a highly suggestive, quasi-narrative, but essentially enigmatic mosaic which demonstrates both the wealth of fascinating early-20th-century documentation bequeathed to us from the silent era, as well as the sheer diversity of human experience reflected through the cinema.
“[FILM IST.] weaves together a stunning array of color-tinted images from a variety of genres, including scientific, erotic, fiction, and actuality films. Deutsch also obtained privileged access to the film archives of the Kinsey Institute, enabling him to incorporate sequences from especially rare erotic and sex films into his latest oeuvre. Deutsch adroitly assembles a precisely constructed, mesmerizing ebb and flow of images into extraordinary montage sequences divided into five acts: Genesis, Paradeisos, Eros, Thanatos, and Symposion.
“Within this narrative construction, the director creates a stunning vision of the natural and mythological order of the universe, love between the sexes, and weapons of mass destruction. … Opening the film with an arresting side view of Annie Oakley shooting her gun at the target, and ending with the iconic, startling shot of the cowboy in THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY aiming his gun at the audience, Deutsch implicates the spectator in the eternal cycle of life and death, so brilliantly and uniquely articulated during 90 minutes of cinematic construction.” –Jon Gartenberg, TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
VENUE
Anthology Film Archives
32 2nd Avenue
New York, NY 10003
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org
Tickets are available at Anthology’s box office on the day of the show only. The box office opens 30 minutes before the first show of the day. There are no advance ticket sales. Reservations are available to Anthology members only.