Film UbuWeb

Barbara Hammer (b. 1934) Mosaik im Vertrauen / Adebar / Schwechater / Arnulf Rainer / Unsere Afrikareise / Pause! (1955 – 1977) Peter Kubelka (born March 23rd, 1934 in Vienna, Austria) is an experimental filmmaker, architect, musician, curator and lecturer. For the most part, his films are shorts experiments linking contrasting sound and images. His most well-known work is his avant-garde piece from 1966, ‘Unsere Afrikareise’ (Our Trip to Africa). Kubelka made mostly 16mm short films, also known as ‘flicker films’. The term came from having the black and clear film alternate, thus creating a ‘flicker’ effect. In the 1970s, he designed the Anthology Film Archive film screening space, located in New York. In this fully painted black space, each seat was covered with black velvet and there was a barrier between the seats in order for the audience members to be completely isolated from one another. The only source of light came from the spotlight aimed at the screen. This design encapsulated the purist, untarnished aesthetic of the Avant-Garde film movement. Kubelka received the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art in 2005.