Experimental Tuesdays at the Union Theatre
10th Annual Festival of Films in French
http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/CIE/French_Film_Festival/about.shtml
7pm ** FREE **
Schuss!
(dir. Nicolas Rey, 2005)
A visually striking and entertaining filmic expedition in material history, Schuss! offers a tantalizing and revealingly digressive slalom around the efflorescence of late 19th century capitalism. Has it all been downhill since? The film commences as a documentary on ski resorts, the German title refers to a downhill run on skis, fast, straight, and unchecked, but almost immediately pursues other tracks such parallel manifestations of the late 1800's as the sports/leisure complex, the development of the aluminum industry, and the history of cinema. In his re-collection of such otherwise dispersed histories, his project is to "question habits of thought - my own first of all." Rey's foray here prompts comparisons to the mode of cultural anthropology, but his approach is also decidedly filmic in its archaeology. The co-founder of the artist-run film lab L'Abominable, Rey processes his film stock in a manner resonate with his subject, the color footage generated here using filtration processes that date back to 1908. "...a delightfully confounding work that reinvigorates the experience of film-viewing....For Rey, the alchemic possibilities of the film lab are an integral part of the creative process, and make Schuss! as compelling visually as it is thematically." Chris Gehman & Andrea Picard, Wavelengths
