Mountain View

Three continuous zooms towards a landscape are deconstructed into a discontinuous appearance of single frames. The panoramic view is obstructed, the organic movement of the hand dissolved into structural variation of the basic units of film. Indexical content is inevitably present on the physical film strip and yet lost in the structure of the film.

  • Markus Maicher
    Director
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    2 minutes 40 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    February 1, 2018
  • Country of Origin:
    Austria
  • Country of Filming:
    Austria
  • Shooting Format:
    16mm
  • Aspect Ratio:
    1:1,33
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Tranås at the Fringe, International Arts Festival
    Tranås
    Sweden
  • Festival ECRA
    Rio de Janeiro
    Brazil
  • Austrian Filmmuseum
    Vienna
    Austria
  • Stadtkino im Künstlerhaus
    Vienna
    Austria
  • K3 Film Festival
    Villach
    Austria
  • Cinemistica
    Granada
    Spain
  • DOBRA - Festival Internacional de Cinema Experimental
    Rio de Janeiro
    Brazil
  • Vienna Shorts Film Festival
    Vienna
    Austria
  • Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival
    Hawick
  • RPM Festival
    Boston
    United States
  • Fracto
    Berlin
    Germany
Distribution Information
  • Canyon Cinema
    Distributor
    Country: Worldwide
    Rights: All Rights
  • Light Cone
    Distributor
    Country: Worldwide
    Rights: All Rights
Director Biography - Markus Maicher

Markus Maicher, 1984, is an experimental filmmaker, projectionist at the Austrian Filmmuseum, part of the artist-run film lab filmkoop wien, PhD candidate at the University of Applied Arts and teaches film as artistic research at the TU Vienna. He studied Sociology, Urban Studies, Psychoanalytic Cultural Studies, Film Studies and Experimental Film at the Friedl Kubelka School for Independent Film. His film works engage with the cinematographic dispositiv and the poetry of the physical qualities of film itself. His films have been shown at festivals such as Vienna Shorts Film Festival, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Experiments in Cinema, Analogica, Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Fracto, RPM Festival and at the Austrian Filmmuseum, Stadtkino and Metro Kinokulturhaus.

Markus Maicher, 1984, ist Filmemacher, Projektionist im österreichischen Filmmuseum, Teil des artist-run film labs filmkoop wien, PhD Kandidat an der Universität für Angewandte Kunst und unterrichtet Film als Medium künstlerischer Forschung an der TU Wien. Er absolvierte die Schule Friedl Kubelka für unabhängigen Film, davor studierte er Soziologie, Stadtforschung, psychoanalytische Kulturwissenschaften und Film- und Medientheorie. Sein filmisches Schaffen beschäftigt sich mit Fragen des kinematographischen Dispositivs und der Materialität von analogem Film. Seine Filme wurden u.a. auf Festivals wie Vienna Shorts Film Festival, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Experiments in Cinema, Analogica, Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Fracto, RPM Festival und im Österreichischen Filmmuseum, Stadtkino und Metro Kinokulturhaus gezeigt.

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Director Statement

Mountain View originated from thinking about framing, movement, surface and depth. The film was made at the Summer Academy in Salzburg where I had this view through a castle window for two weeks, which turned the landscape into something pictorial and surreal. The frame of course is a basic motif of film: film as a window into another world that has depth, while the canvas remains a two-dimensional surface. The second basic motif of film is movement: movement as an illusion created by the sequence of 24 static frames per second. I started making several long zooms with an old Russian 16mm camera, each individual zoom a continuous movement projecting the viewer into the distance until the texture of the image dissolves in a slow overexposure. I then deconstructed these three zooms into a structure of individual frames, creating a tension between the organic movement by hand and structural variation. Within this variation the image started to appear as a pure surface without depth, which nevertheless draws you into it, until it dissolves. I wanted to question reality as something fundamentally phantasmatic, as an image that depends on its exposure. I also wanted to confront the expectations of the viewer towards film, which mostly revolves around resolution: a narrative that moves forward, a movement that brings you somewhere. In Mountain View everything moves but somehow you are stuck. You get closer, but there is nothing to see.