EUROPE RESURRECTION

by Tony WU
2006 / 16mm & 35mm & 8mm & Super 8mm & Video / color / sound / 1S / 5' 48

Werner Herzog once thought about 'touching' the emulsion process during filmmaking. That ‘touch’ never happened in Herzog’s films. In the making of a film, though it takes a human being to push the button of a camera, it is the camera/machine that controls and operates the emulsion process of the film.

EUROPE RESURRECTION is a collage composition made of 35mm slides and negatives, and of film negatives and prints in 16mm, Super-8mm, and Regular 8mm. Using found still images, I rearrange those slides taken during several trips to Europe over the years, and categorize them by countries — Austria, Hungry, Czech Republic, Germany and Italy; aside from these slides, I edit in self-portraits and family photos. In order to transcend/overcome the limitation of formats and textures of these still images, it is necessary to undertake certain transformation and editing which help to integrate them with 16mm, Super-8mm, and 8mm footages on clear 35mm film leader. Created with a human being/visual artist’s touch by hand and handmade processes that revive the inner spirit of variant imagery, EUROPE RESURRECTION is a film that is no longer monopolized by machinery maneuvers. It is a work that aims to transcend and integrate different film formats and visual styles, and that allows imagery to surpass the borderline between still and moving images — it may go from static to fluid, and from fluid back to static again—to travel freely in this new form. Overlapping layers of stills and moving images, the European landscape reincarnates in this new-born moving image that blurs and obscures. EUROPE RESURRECTION challenges the linear physical timeline of images and mental timeline of memories.

EUROPE RESURRECTION is an awakening call to self, to memory, and to perception. It explores the limitation of the state of being of image, and discourses ways of viewing. It looks for alternatives of the viewing experience by taking viewers into multiple times and spaces, and by further intervening the conventional ways of seeing and perceiving. It is a search for new possibilities of interacting with/reacting to the world of visual image.

Director's Words:
EUROPE RESURRECTION continues my exploration and repeatedly experiments with various meaning of that extend from the tension and integration between Moving and still images states. EUROPE RESURRECTION starts with still images, splicing together film taken in a variety of film formats, 35mm slides, 16mm, 8mm, and Super-8 and captures during journey to Europe few years ago, and aligns them to the 24 frame per second temporal mode of film movement. I made archives of the journey and then working by hand, overlaid these ready-made archives with also still photos of my own private life. Next step, through digital manipulation, I created a dialogue between different times and spaces, sparking a range of disparate thoughts regarding my own identity and cultures. EUROPE RESURRECTION attempts to awaken the profound inner memories of both the filmmaker and the viewer.

Director, Producer, Camera, Sound Recording: Chun-Hui Wu/Tony
Editor: Dazai
Music: Sandra Li

1 PRINT IN DISTRIBUTION


distribution format Digital file on server (SD)
screen 1,37 - Standard (single screen)
speed 29,976 fps
sound sound
rental fee 42,00 €