Arnulf Rainer (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #28 extract: Arnulf Rainer (1960)



If cinema is light and darkness is this, a 'flicker film' that alternates between white and black frames, cinema? Moreover, if cinema is sound and silence is this, a slalom between white noise and silence, cinema? 
These are two questions that Kubleka means to ask by reducing cinema to its most fundamental components and testing them. In such, the expressive nature of a more full and traditional kind of cinema is stripped away as we're forced to ask if this can mean something to us. The question this then raises is: Are we, the audience, willing to accept this as cinema by giving it meaning, or maybe seeing meaning within it? 
The follow up question to a negative response would then be: Why? And so, in a way, this becomes a less annoying constructivist film that has us question our beliefs on cinema without meaning to put us through dozens of minutes, or many hours, of pain. As a result, this one may be worth the watch.

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