Schmelzdahin

21.01.2017

A found footage experiment made using footage from a 50s disaster film. Slowed down audio and lots of distorted textures are present.

A found footage experiment made using an excerpt from the film Taranula! (1955)

Short film by SCHMELZDAHIN

Short film by SCHMELZDAHIN

We were slightly feverish when we started working with a particular color process. At the development, we had obtained wonderful tones of blue and yellow as well as colored solarizations. Thus, this process was used for 15 days then the fever subsided. At that time they listened to the music of Gilbert and Lewis, and that is why they put a piece on the soundtrack.

A Schmelzdahin short wherein a print of a portion of Nosferatu (including the iconic shot of the vampire on the boat) has been degraded and abstracted through the bacterialogical decomposition, disintegration, and chemical processes Schmelzdahin would use.

13.08.1988

13.06.1988

14.05.1988

08.04.1988

01.04.1988

31.03.1988

30.03.1988

29.03.1988

26.03.1988

25.03.1988

23.03.1988

20.03.1988

19.03.1988

an experiment made using footage of a western. The film is extremely damaged and degraded, rendering it a mainly textural experience. The short is mainly a warm yellow, punctuated occasionally with blue.

Another film made using roughly the same footage as Bremen Lagerhaus, this really showcases the uncontrollable and chaotic nature of the Schmelzdahin process.

A found footage experiment made using old horror footage. There are lovely transitions between colours and textures.

Found footage experiment made using footage from a disaster film. A wide array of colours and textures distort and bury the original footage.

The source material has all but been lost in this Schmelzdahin short. Instead whatever film has been used has been degraded to the point of looking mainly like light brown, sandy textures punctured by damage to the stock.

Distorted found footage experiment of a firing squad sequence from a war film.

Found footage experiment using a war movie.

A very degraded found footage experiment. The film runs slightly slowed down, distorting the soundtrack. Many textures of torn and crumpled film are present.

Short film by SCHMELZDAHIN

With Krepl, the political dimension of Schmelzdahin's research becomes clearer. The color scales the planes of scientific or colonial documentaries, horrible rubs that require these bodies scaled with the scalpel, these giant hamsters, these natives threatened by a camera that unsuccessfully repel. The inhuman mutilation of creatures determines chromatic pathology, color must be understood, not merely as a plastic liberation, but as a political gesture: it becomes the cinematographic path that today most often follows protest. According to a completely different visual syntax, we are not very far from the concerns that animate Criminals of Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi.

In 1988, we watched a lot of horror movies, with curiosity. A few images of monsters were taken that were mixed with shots taken from TV, movies, and a sequence of a porn movie. Some of this material has been treated with corrosive chemicals. The monsters started a new life and it seemed that the film had been lost. But a hedgehog put an end to the nightmare and brought us back to the original fire.

Degraded found footage of a silent comedy.

Degraded found footage, primarily of a cowboy.

Der General defies narrative conventions. As a visual experience and thanks to the manipulations of color and the processing of images, Der General deploys its own logic and becomes a consistent whole in its visual expression. Plunged into a world of abstract fairy tale, traces of dreams, the nature and history of Germany converge and shape a timeless and limitless kingdom.

Short film by SCHMELZDAHIN

Short film by SCHMELZDAHIN

Short film by SCHMELZDAHIN

Short film by SCHMELZDAHIN

Short film by SCHMELZDAHIN

In 1985, I threw a reel in the small pond of my garden. I think it was Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. I got it back a year later. This experiment is described in Aus den Algen. After the comments, we see the filmed material recovered. From the original copy, only the support survived: seaweed cultures have settled there, which now provide the content of the images.

"A film that creates connections between image and text material and whose appeal lies in its fragmentary [...] destructive, strongly associative character; To see the film as a gloomy fantasy of doom, as a difficult poetic puzzle or simply as an idiosyncratic document of a bizarre fantasy is left to the viewer for himself." -Bielefeld Magazine

Short film by SCHMELZDAHIN

It is a wildlife film on flights of birds when glowing sunsets. On the soundtrack, a hum noise radio, which resembles the sound of a plane and that seems to criticize the human desire to fly, sometimes absurd when comparing this flight to the flights of birds. "WELTENEMPFANGER, marine and desert landscapes are filtered red, interspersed monochrome red, pure color serves fade, the birds fly into the red and yellow. The color is applied in water on the image which respects the framework, the existence of plan and the analog dimension. She unreal and alter but which works here is its color, not its figurales powers: it remains discreet, less virulent that the brilliant forms of disharmonic sequence that characterize the work of SCHMELZDAHIN

Short film by SCHMELZDAHIN

Short film by SCHMELZDAHIN

Film material is subjected to biochemical processes by burying it in the garden, storing it in a pond, or overheating it. The results of these natural processes of decay or aging are then copied back onto film and thus conserved in the state of their dissolution. - Lightcone

Short film by SCHMELZDAHIN