Dore O.

Dore O.

Birth : 1946-08-09, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany

Death : 2022-03-09

History

Trained as a painter, O. was cofounder of the Hamburger Filmschau, alongside with her husband and collaborator Werner Nekes. For all the psychedelia of her early work, subsequent films are rigorous in refractory experimentation: rear-projections, double-impositions, repeated frames and breathtaking lunges of the handheld camera, which seems bolstered as much by raw impulse as it does by any guiding principle of onscreen organization. O.’s work establishes its own space-time linearities, then argues them against each other–sometimes content with a mild flicker, a closing or opening aperture or a flurry of blunt smears. This is a playful and often freefalling visual poetics, best left to wash over you pure and analyzed later (or better yet, not at all.)

Profile

Dore O.

Movies

Eye-Step
Director
Traces a series of forever-winding staircases like liminal excerpts from an endless memory-spool, asking the viewer which spaces their eyes may have taken for granted along the ambling path.
The critical mass
Herself
A documentary about the 'critical mass', the Film Coop, a group of young filmmakers in Hamburg during the 1960s - a small group far from the Mainstream or the New German Cinema.
Xoanon
Director
A painter surrounded by images - his own and those of the reality that surrounds him - is the protagonist of the latest film by Dore O., moves exactly in the border area between the two, only apparently separate worlds.
Candida
Director
In 1920 Frans Masereel published in Paris his woodcut series "The idea". Dore O. has draw inspiration from this work on her first feature film, a poetic fable about the human longing for a free and just society. Following Masereel "idea" Dore O's "CANDIDA" accesses old, anchored in the ancient Christian tradition and ideas, according to which such ideas and aspirations in the image of the naked woman find their embodiment.
Blindman's Ball
Director
A painterly, poetic experimental film with narrative elements. A woman is looking after an obviously blind man. She undresses, bandages and dresses him again. Since the action takes place on two temporal planes running in opposite directions, the couple's relationship appears to be in a state of stagnation. In-between, we are shown the images in the protagonists' minds: nightmares, an optical machine, but also erotic dreams from perhaps better days. Tango motifs and an aria (composed by Anthony Moore) reinforce the impression of a romantic chamber piece. The man's blindness refers to the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau, who destroyed his sight through keeping his naked eye fixed too long on the sun while researching into the persistence of luminous impressions on the retina. The pictorial technique, with layer after layer dissolving into one another, is reminiscent of the overpainting technique deployed by the director in her work for the canvas.
Enzyklop
Director
Enzyklop is a rediscovery and reconstruction of the cyclopean gaze that Odysseus erased to free himself. The search for the lost view leads to intermediate distances, into the realm of association, the multiplicity of dimensions. An anthology, a variety of image/image ideas is created.
Stern des Melies
Writer
Short film dedicated to Georges Melies.
Stern des Melies
Director
Short film dedicated to Georges Melies.
Beuys
Director
The German artist Joseph Beuys is reflecting on his theory of art, being filmed as a kinetic sculpture. In 1981, the film has won the German film critic's award for “Best short film in Germany”.
Hurrycan
"HURRYCAN has nothing to do with whirlwinds, although in this Nekes film the pictures journey across the screen, excitedly, spasmodically and flickering. The title weds the element of haste with the notion of a film can, which in this case turns out to be something of a Pandora's Box and contains expectations for a new way of seeing. A computerized shutter system that Nekes had built" (Aus: filmmakers cooperative catalogue No. 7) - http://wernernekes.de/00_cms/cms/front_content.php?idart=548
Frozen Flashes
Director
A series of still photographs, is various states of photographic exposure.
Kaskara
Director
An experimental film where a particular space is constantly "present" : there is a complex usage of superim- position, and of split-screen effects. The place shown is a part of a house in the country. Doors and windows are continually shown, emphasizing the film's concern with framing. Other images are present: city-scapes of a particularly sinister nature, implying a sense of ruin, and shots of a chorus on a stage. These shots begin and end the film which is accompanied by a vocal chant on the soundtrack.
Diwan
Diwan, a lyric anthology, an outdoor movie with people. With people living in the surrounding precious and very beautifully photographed nature, are neither more nor less than one part of it. What Nekes manages there with landscape, as a cunning and quote many fine artist in a medium that runs in time, as he defeated the time changed, by themselves for change of scenery uses, as it interferes with the laws of chronology through the rewind ability of the camera or destroyed, which is a compelling and highly aesthetic experimental company.
T-Wo-Men
The film is divided into five parts differing in pictorial and musical structure. The plot, two women and their love for one another, is of secondary importance. An ingenious combination of stereoscopic images and montage of individual pictures make new qualities of perception accessible to the viewer. In the final part of the love scenes pictorial sequences and music build up to a delirious rhythm.
Blonde Barbarei
Director
A female figure wanders inside a warehouse interior and through various motifs, including a fan and a birdcage, set to a medieval chant.
Kaldalon
Director
Attracted to Nordic landscapes, [Dore O.] filmed KALDALON (1970/71) in Iceland where images of water, rocks, steam and smoke were technically enhanced to appear blue-tinged. (Text from 'The Concise Cinegraph: An Encyclopedia of German Cinema')
Abbandono
"...Nekes retreats behind his film. What is left is a double portrait, in which neither Dore 0. nor the grand landscape remain unchanged. The cold of the icy coastline - long shots of stones, snow and the sea - dwindles away before the image of Dore 0. Solitude is superflous, when the grandiose mountain meadow invites somersaults. ... In this case Nekes handles what he shows considerately. He releases the objects he portrays. He allows them to unfold. And so model and patterns actually serve another purpose: to let poetry grow, and energy and beauty and confidence nell'abbandono." (Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, Filmkritik, 9/1971).
Lawale
According to the director, "Memory is a cruel hope without awakening."
Lawale
Cinematography
According to the director, "Memory is a cruel hope without awakening."
Lawale
Director
According to the director, "Memory is a cruel hope without awakening."
Alaska
Music
Alaska is a wordless experimental film with a simple, droning soundtrack that sounds as if it is a piece for violin and refrigerator hum.
Alaska
Script
Alaska is a wordless experimental film with a simple, droning soundtrack that sounds as if it is a piece for violin and refrigerator hum.
Alaska
Producer
Alaska is a wordless experimental film with a simple, droning soundtrack that sounds as if it is a piece for violin and refrigerator hum.
Alaska
Director
Alaska is a wordless experimental film with a simple, droning soundtrack that sounds as if it is a piece for violin and refrigerator hum.
Jüm-Jüm
In “jüm-jüm” by Dore 0. and Werner Nekes, a girl swings for 10 minutes in front of a movie screen, on which is painted a phallus (slightly abstract and fairly large) The perspective is such that the girl appears to be swinging into and out of the phallus. It is one who is content to see through the specific event. the work exhausts itself in a trivial aspect, the literary. This is most comfortable for the critic: the literary content of a work is easiest to reproduce in a literary form of criticism.
Jüm-Jüm
Director
In “jüm-jüm” by Dore 0. and Werner Nekes, a girl swings for 10 minutes in front of a movie screen, on which is painted a phallus (slightly abstract and fairly large) The perspective is such that the girl appears to be swinging into and out of the phallus. It is one who is content to see through the specific event. the work exhausts itself in a trivial aspect, the literary. This is most comfortable for the critic: the literary content of a work is easiest to reproduce in a literary form of criticism.