A panorama of a world divided into three. The camera‘s 360° pan begins at a playground and passes by everyday scenes of urban life – pedestrians, cars, shops – before returning to its starting point. The field of view is divided into three separate pictures showing the same scene with a slight delay from right to left. In other words the scene of the little girl setting off on a cableway at the playground is repeated in the other fields. And when the camera returns to the first image after the pan is completed, everything starts from the beginning – or so it seems: The girl starts down the hill once again. The first image is therefore the last – and vice versa. As a result of this slight distortion and delay in perception, Johann Lurf‘s film, with deceptively simple conception (a motor on the camera‘s tripod controls the speed of the pan) and at the same time reflexively playful, has an unexpected effect: The movement of the objects (leaves in the wind, cars passing by) and people (the little girl, pedestrians) are literally stretched in space. Perception is determined by the camera, the speed and the division. As a result of this fragmentation of the continuum of perception, Pan resembles Dietmar Offenhuber‘s Besenbahn (2001), though at the same time it also appears, due to the inescapable direction of the camera‘s movement and its idea of constant new beginnings, to be a miniature of a great theoretical question relating to film: Where does the never-ending stream of images begin and end? Everywhere, one is tempted to say, possibly at every playground in the world.
Michael Pekler (Translation: Steve Wilder)
1 PRINT IN DISTRIBUTION
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distribution format |
DCP on server (SMPTE 2K) |
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screen |
2,35 - Scope (single screen) |
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speed |
25 fps |
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sound |
sound |
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rental fee |
32,00 € |
