Thoughts on Arnulf Rainer

I have been extremely fascinated by "Arnulf Rainer" for quite some time (ever since I first saw it, really). Not only is it an extremely important exercise for breaking film down to it's most basic elements, but also because of the disconnection of perception. Meaning, how the film sets up a synchronicity between black + silence and white + white noise, but then part of the way through the film it switches. I distinctly remember my first viewing seeing a moment of white when there is white noise in the middle of a black section and realizing it was my brain inserting a moment of white.

Of course, Conrad's film "The Flicker" and Paul Shairt's "T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G" both take this phenomenon to another level. But Arnulf Rainer completely represents a catalyst in experimental and structuralist film history and got people to think much more about the film gate and it's relation to the celluloid. Certainly there were people like Harry Smith working with pure celluloid with his hand-painted films, but it was often with [possible] indifference to the frame line.

Within all of my research on Arnulf Rainer I have never come across another flicker film that came before it. I believe there were some moments in Van der Beek and Brakhage films that were coming close, but not quite as purely structural.

I also think it's interesting how not many people consider Arnulf Rainer (and all flicker films) to be an animated film. During my entire time of studying for my MFA in Animation I was the only person (students and faculty) that would reference Arnulf Rainer. Some might say, "Well, that's what happens when you go to USC, the Hollywood University." Often people who say this are unaware that David James, Akira Lippit, Kathy Smith, Christine Panushka and many other notable avant-garde filmmakers and historians teach at USC. And within animation I certainly got my fair share of Brakhage, Smith, Breer and McLaren.

Even during my studies as an undergraduate student at NYU I took an experimental animation class where I made my first flicker film and I was berated by the other students for the film because it was "not animation". Now, that same professor, who I am still friends with, shows Sharits' "T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G" to every single class he has.

Maybe I'm thinking about it all wrong. Maybe flicker films are the only free area - it's not animation...and certainly not live-action. Maybe it's not even cinema...Maybe it's just a loose representation of an idea. That's very liberating. Who needs a camera?...who even needs a computer?! I know Arnulf Rainer was created from using a marker on a strip of clear celluloid. And, like Mothlight, it holds up as a work of art without a projector.