Werner Nekes

Diwan, a lyric anthology, an outdoor movie with people. With people living in the surrounding precious and very beautifully photographed nature, are neither more nor less than one part of it. What Nekes manages there with landscape, as a cunning and quote many fine artist in a medium that runs in time, as he defeated the time changed, by themselves for change of scenery uses, as it interferes with the laws of chronology through the rewind ability of the camera or destroyed, which is a compelling and highly aesthetic experimental company.

An exhilarating and amusing encyclopedic look at the "prehistory" of cinema. Werner Nekes charts the fascination with moving pictures which led to the birth of film, covering shadow plays, peep shows, flip books, flicks, magic lanterns, lithopanes, panoramic, scrolls, colorful forms of early animation, and numerous other historical artiffices. Working with these formats, early "producers" created melodramas, comedies, -- as well as lots of pornography -- anticipating most of the forms known today. Nekes probes these colorful toys and inventions in a rich and rewarding optical experience. Film Before Film is a bewildering assault of exotic (and sometimes erotic) images and illusions.

Reel 27 of Gérard Courant’s on-going Cinematon series.

A female figure wanders inside a warehouse interior and through various motifs, including a fan and a birdcage, set to a medieval chant.

German American artist Eva Hesse (1936 – 1970) created her innovative art in latex and fiberglass in the whirling aesthetic vortex of 1960s New York. Her flowing forms were in part a reaction to the rigid structures of then-popular minimalism, a male-dominated movement. Hesse’s complicated personal life encompassed not only a chaotic 1930s Germany, but also illness and the immigrant culture of New York in the 1940s. One of the twentieth century’s most intriguing artists, she finally receives her due in this film, an emotionally gripping journey with a gifted woman of great courage.

Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.

The funny clown Bratislav Metulskie is found dead in circus "Apollo". The retired commissioner 00 Schneider is asked to assume control of the case. Schneider and his aged sidekick Körschgen investigate to find the murderer.

A documentary about the 'critical mass', the Film Coop, a group of young filmmakers in Hamburg during the 1960s - a small group far from the Mainstream or the New German Cinema.

An experimental film where a particular space is constantly "present" : there is a complex usage of superim- position, and of split-screen effects. The place shown is a part of a house in the country. Doors and windows are continually shown, emphasizing the film's concern with framing. Other images are present: city-scapes of a particularly sinister nature, implying a sense of ruin, and shots of a chorus on a stage. These shots begin and end the film which is accompanied by a vocal chant on the soundtrack.

Home movies shot on Super 8mm by W+B Hein over 10 years.

A fixed shot showing six persons, looking into the camera inertly. Gradually tiny, minimal movements can be registered.

No synopsis available yet.

Director Werner Nekes has created this experimental film in the mode of James Joyce's Ulysses to the extent that human interactions are represented by poetic, symbolic images and language, with a certain amount of nudity added in.

In conversations with his friends and colleagues, among them Bernd Upnmoor, Helmut Herbst, Alexander Kluge, Klaus Wyborny, Daniel Kothenschulte and Helge Schneider, Ulrike Pfeiffer takes us on a journey into the broad expanse of Nekes' cabinet of wonder and his cinematic works. At the same time, this documentary provides an insight into the history of experimental film in Germany.

No synopsis available yet.

Knokke, Belgium. A small mundane coastal town, home to the beau-monde. To compete with Venice and Cannes, the posh casino hosts the second ‘World Festival of Film and the Arts’ in 1949, organised in part by the Royal Cinematheque of Belgium. To celebrate cinema’s 50 year existence, they put together a side program showcasing the medium in all its shapes and forms: surrealist film, absolute film, dadaist films, abstract film,… The side program would soon become a festival in its own right: ‘EXPRMNTL’, dedicated to experimental cinema, and would become a mythical gathering of the avant-garde…

Dore O. and later Nekes speak to each other and into the camera, slowly and deliberately like a speech exercise, quickly like a tongue twister or in competition with each other, accentuated rhythmically or rubato, until the silent noise becomes piercing and rings in the ears. As in a mirror joke, Zerroptik also involves the viewer in the erotic duet, which persistently elicits all the comedy and latent horrors of a sudden discovery from the field of associations of the strange sentence.

Jurgen is an unknown electrician with a dream of pop stardom. His mother browbeats him into fame, while two managers compete for his contract. All Johnny really wants to do is get some sleep.

Jurgen is an unknown electrician with a dream of pop stardom. His mother browbeats him into fame, while two managers compete for his contract. All Johnny really wants to do is get some sleep.

The film traces the history of the camera obscura, the understanding of perspective and anamorphosis, peepshows and it shows the beauty of historical shadowtheaters and shadow toys.

The film traces the history of the camera obscura, the understanding of perspective and anamorphosis, peepshows and it shows the beauty of historical shadowtheaters and shadow toys.

The film traces the history of the camera obscura, the understanding of perspective and anamorphosis, peepshows and it shows the beauty of historical shadowtheaters and shadow toys.

The German artist Joseph Beuys is reflecting on his theory of art, being filmed as a kinetic sculpture. In 1981, the film has won the German film critic's award for “Best short film in Germany”.

Other essential predecessors of film were those devices that created the illusion of motion by taking advantage of the persistence of vision and the stroboscopic effect, such as the thaumatrope, phenakistoscope or wheel of life, zoetrope or magic drum and praxinoscope and later on, the more sophisticated flip-books such as the kinora and mutoscope.

Other essential predecessors of film were those devices that created the illusion of motion by taking advantage of the persistence of vision and the stroboscopic effect, such as the thaumatrope, phenakistoscope or wheel of life, zoetrope or magic drum and praxinoscope and later on, the more sophisticated flip-books such as the kinora and mutoscope.

Other essential predecessors of film were those devices that created the illusion of motion by taking advantage of the persistence of vision and the stroboscopic effect, such as the thaumatrope, phenakistoscope or wheel of life, zoetrope or magic drum and praxinoscope and later on, the more sophisticated flip-books such as the kinora and mutoscope.

A montage experiment in which Dore O., her body painted in different colours, swings back and forth in front of a movie screen, on which is painted a phallus (slightly abstract and fairly large). The perspective is such that the girl appears to be swinging into and out of the phallus. It is one who is content to see through the specific event. The work exhausts itself in a trivial aspect, the literary. This is most comfortable for the critic: the literary content of a work is easiest to reproduce in a literary form of criticism.

Diwan, a lyric anthology, an outdoor movie with people. With people living in the surrounding precious and very beautifully photographed nature, are neither more nor less than one part of it. What Nekes manages there with landscape, as a cunning and quote many fine artist in a medium that runs in time, as he defeated the time changed, by themselves for change of scenery uses, as it interferes with the laws of chronology through the rewind ability of the camera or destroyed, which is a compelling and highly aesthetic experimental company.

Diwan, a lyric anthology, an outdoor movie with people. With people living in the surrounding precious and very beautifully photographed nature, are neither more nor less than one part of it. What Nekes manages there with landscape, as a cunning and quote many fine artist in a medium that runs in time, as he defeated the time changed, by themselves for change of scenery uses, as it interferes with the laws of chronology through the rewind ability of the camera or destroyed, which is a compelling and highly aesthetic experimental company.

Diwan, a lyric anthology, an outdoor movie with people. With people living in the surrounding precious and very beautifully photographed nature, are neither more nor less than one part of it. What Nekes manages there with landscape, as a cunning and quote many fine artist in a medium that runs in time, as he defeated the time changed, by themselves for change of scenery uses, as it interferes with the laws of chronology through the rewind ability of the camera or destroyed, which is a compelling and highly aesthetic experimental company.

Hurrycan has nothing to do with whirlwinds, although in this Nekes film the pictures journey across the screen, excitedly, spasmodically and flickering. The title weds the element of haste with the notion of a film can, which in this case turns out to be something of a Pandora's Box and contains expectations for a new way of seeing. A computerized shutter system that Nekes had built.

The film looks at ways of creating spezial illusions through amiguous images, perspective theatres, folding peepshows and from the 19th century, the stereoscope, which look forward to today’s holography.

The film looks at ways of creating spezial illusions through amiguous images, perspective theatres, folding peepshows and from the 19th century, the stereoscope, which look forward to today’s holography.

The film looks at ways of creating spezial illusions through amiguous images, perspective theatres, folding peepshows and from the 19th century, the stereoscope, which look forward to today’s holography.

An exhilarating and amusing encyclopedic look at the "prehistory" of cinema. Werner Nekes charts the fascination with moving pictures which led to the birth of film, covering shadow plays, peep shows, flip books, flicks, magic lanterns, lithopanes, panoramic, scrolls, colorful forms of early animation, and numerous other historical artiffices. Working with these formats, early "producers" created melodramas, comedies, -- as well as lots of pornography -- anticipating most of the forms known today. Nekes probes these colorful toys and inventions in a rich and rewarding optical experience. Film Before Film is a bewildering assault of exotic (and sometimes erotic) images and illusions.

Alaska is a wordless experimental film with a simple, droning soundtrack that sounds as if it is a piece for violin and refrigerator hum.

An expedition report (a winter sailing trip down the Elbe), and a document about filmmakers who leave a city because it's more hospitable elsewhere, reflections, reflexes.

An expedition report (a winter sailing trip down the Elbe), and a document about filmmakers who leave a city because it's more hospitable elsewhere, reflections, reflexes.

An expedition report (a winter sailing trip down the Elbe), and a document about filmmakers who leave a city because it's more hospitable elsewhere, reflections, reflexes.

Directed by Werner Nekes.

"...Nekes retreats behind his film. What is left is a double portrait, in which neither Dore 0. nor the grand landscape remain unchanged. The cold of the icy coastline - long shots of stones, snow and the sea - dwindles away before the image of Dore 0. Solitude is superflous, when the grandiose mountain meadow invites somersaults. ... In this case Nekes handles what he shows considerately. He releases the objects he portrays. He allows them to unfold. And so model and patterns actually serve another purpose: to let poetry grow, and energy and beauty and confidence nell'abbandono."