Bady Minck’s avant-garde film breaks through the conservative norms of documentary filmmaking. The film reexamines a world of banal images through the scenes depicted on thousands of landscape postcards that depict the Austrian Alps and the Salzburg province, from the time of the Nazi regime until today. The postcards are filmed at various speeds and are interlaced with an actor, animated objects and documentary footage of the places that appear on the postcards, all of which are edited at a breathtaking pace. On the soundtrack, which is reminiscent of that of a horror film, words from the back of the postcards are whispered, adding a historical and ironic dimension to the pastoral images. A film that surprises both the eye and the mind at every turn – it’s about memory, language and the senses that deceive us. “In the Beginning was the Eye” is the “Alice Through the Looking Glass” of documentary avant-garde films, which will leave you overwhelmed. Director: Bady Minck, Austria, 45 minutes.
http://www.badyminck.com