Piccolo film decomposto (1986)

Overview

This extremely short film is dedicated to chronophotography, which—as is well known—is the prelude to cinema. As with one of my earlier films dedicated to Muybridge (The Naked Killer, 1982), this one was excavated from books and catalogues, that is, from typographic ink. I tried, in a certain sense, to reanimate the inanimable as does the photographer Duane Michals, having only, sometimes, three or four frames. I found older stroboscopic technology as well as more contemporary flicker effects to be very helpful here and there. I attempted to realize the cinematic identification of Skladanowksy with Avedon; contaminations, precisely, between creators of films and creators of photography, contemporary or not. It is surprising to see Michals, a contemporary photographer, bearing such a strong cinematographic resemblance to Londe, the proto-filmmaker. I hope, at least, to have told the story of their direct commingling, as if by a single secret author.