Marc Adrian

experimental short film by Moucle Blackout

This film is a kind of anthology about Vienna, from the invention of film to the present day. The aim is to break down the usual clichéd "image of Vienna" such as that found in the traditional "Vienna Film" by juxtaposing documentary footage, newly shot material and subjective sequences created by various artists. Individual, self-contained sections of the film gain new meaning within the context of historical material. Familiar sites appear estranged when edited together with historical scenes. Other scenes appear like a persiflage or satirical. The film does not incorporate any commentary whatsoever. It is a collage of diverse materials aimed at conveying a distanced image of Vienna to the viewer

Blue Movie is a metric color-and-form trip orchestrated with psychedelic sounds, the latter is a symbolic story about individual/collective drug use, which can be read as a model for, or a critique of society ... Both Kren and Radax had experience with other art forms but were for the most part filmmakers. Adrian, on the other hand, was an artist and filmmaker and poet/writer. Adrian, in a sense, already defied any kind of brewer´s purity requirements through his diversified talents.

Film by Marc Adrian

Experimental documentary film about the behavior and culture of the Indians in the American southwest and about the situation of the white artist in (Austrian) society.

The Films Text I and Text II were likewise developed from randomly generated mathematical series; Text II is a pure permutation, Text I arose from the storage program of a computer. The words chosen were required to have the same meaning and spelling both in German and English.

UAREI, made between 1972 and 1977 in San Francisco, London and Vienna, is Marc Adrian's last abstract film and unfolds a psychedelic-meditative effect. The film is preceded by a quote ("human existence being an hallucination containing in itself the secondary hallucinations of day and night it will becomes any man of sense to be concerned at the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death.") from the fictional Irish author Flann O'Brien fictional philosopher and scientist DeSelby, who is "quoted" in O'Brien's novel The Third Policeman. (Anna Artaker)

No synopsis available yet.

Text III is dedicated to Marianne, a young woman from northern Germany who worked with Adrian's mother at a military service office. She was living with them at the time of a bomb attack near the end of the war, and was brutally killed before Adrian's eyes while collecting firewood. So much for aleatoric, not to mention fate or chance. Excerpts from the Tibetan Book of the Dead can be heard being read in Tibetan. If you didn't know what was being read, you might say that something imperative can be heard through the clear recitative.

No synopsis available yet.

Go is the axis of FILMBLOCK I: the precise aleatoric narration. Chance and the will to form are perfectly balanced out, everything is change. The elements are further reduced in Go: the legs of a man and woman, moving closer and farther away, still, this all reproduced as a negative, with an atonal aggression on the soundtrack – one could see it as the story of an unsettled relationship. Adrian for his part might be dissatisfied with the fact that people almost compulsively would interpret it in this way, but if he didn´t want that to happen then he should have used more abstract material.

Schriftfilm functions according to the principle of the cadavre exquis or that of a textual machine that one finds in well sorted bookstores: On screen we see alternating nouns on top, and alternating verbs underneath. Some actually ‘fit’ such as “man walks”... ; while others might only ‘fit’ in a more extended sense “man burns,” “water breaks”... ; while others only ‘fit’ poetically “water screams,” “stone runs,” “sun falls”... ; and in this context the conventional language=meaning-logic disappears behind the pure word=meaning-presence. “Stone runs” is exactly as significant as “man walks,” whereby “man walks” through the very presence of “stone runs” appears to be something extraordinary, and “stone runs” becomes something entirely true and possible.

Experimental film combining letters and sounds.

A randomized cathode beam has been transferred to 35mm celluloid – in this sense Random can be seen as one of the first “computer-films” ever.

Orange is a randomly generated montage consisting of visual and verbal associations that can be evoked by the image and notion of an orange.

“In Wo-Da-Vor-Bei the syllables comprising the title are…worked over until they are more like images, structures, or abstract figures than they are word fragments.” –Hans Petersen

Marc Adrian´s FILMBLOCK 0 paces out the foundations of a ritual of self-realization. With its matte surfaces (colorful leader) and easily visible splices – before the production of a negative, the film fell apart at the taped places with every presentation – Black Movie I stands at the beginning of this development, while Black Movie II with its gleaming, painstakingly made colors and sparklingly clean “cuts” marks the conclusion. Both films by themselves do not tell us anything. They are colors in space and time and nothing more, experiences of different materialities. Together, considering the three films that come between them, they tell the tale of the acquisition of a confidence and strength in craftsmanship, and with this a deeper understanding of the medium – a clarity.

Marc Adrian´s FILMBLOCK 0 paces out the foundations of a ritual of self-realization. With its matte surfaces (colorful leader) and easily visible splices – before the production of a negative, the film fell apart at the taped places with every presentation – Black Movie I stands at the beginning of this development, while Black Movie II with its gleaming, painstakingly made colors and sparklingly clean “cuts” marks the conclusion. Both films by themselves do not tell us anything. They are colors in space and time and nothing more, experiences of different materialities. Together, considering the three films that come between them, they tell the tale of the acquisition of a confidence and strength in craftsmanship, and with this a deeper understanding of the medium – a clarity.

The film consists of documentary shots from the first of May in Vienna, especially from participants in the socialist Mayday parade traditionally strolling through the main avenue in the Prater park after the parade in addition to some previously filmed sequences.