If you weren’t familiar with Peter Tscherkassky’s films and just happened to stumble into a theater screening one, you might mistakenly think you’ve discovered an old surrealist film by Bunuel or Cocteau - a lost sequel to An Andalusian Dog or Blood Of A Poet. But, you’d also have to presume that the film was being projected at the wrong speed, 96 frames per second. Tscherkassky’s reconstruction of existent films is the visual equivalent of a Brion Gysin cut-up, fragments of information that operate at the borderline between the conscious mind and dream.
 
Tscherkassky, an Austrian avant-gardist, manipulates found footage, which he edits using a moviola rather than computers. In the short film Outer Space, Tscherkassky deconstructs Sidney J. Furie’s The Entity, a cheesy knock-off of Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist, and re-constructs it as a feverish, psychotic, mindfuck.  Filmmaker Guy Madden describes Outer Space thusly:

“shards of frightened eyes, trembling hands, and violent outbursts of self-defense, presented in multiple exposures too layered to count, too arresting to ignore. Each frame is further entangled with details revealed by a jittery effect (a primitive traveling matte?) which spills fluttering ectoplasmic lightpools from one cubist aspect of the woman to another. The filmmaker mimics the action of nightmares by condensing the original imagery of the feature and displacing it into a new narrative—as in dreams, a narrative not explicitly linked to actual events, but emotionally more true than any rational explanation. Tscherkassky’s shorts are actually considerably more terrifying than the original material.”

 
Note to B-movie fans: Barbara Hershey plays the woman under assault.
Outer Space is the second film in Tscherkassky’s Cinemascope trilogy.
 
Turn out the lights and watch.

Dude.  You’ve been posting some pretty rad sh*t.  Thank you.

Amazing.
The most realistic interpretation of a nightmare I have ever seen.
Perfect.

I saw a screening of his work off 35mm in Rotterdam a few years ago. Love his stuff. I reckon it’s more like Man Rays stuff, defo uses his techniques.

I love it when the world works this way: Just yesterday, I was trying to remember the name of this film, the artist, or the original film it samples, and woke up this morning to find the answer!

A decade or so ago, a friend (who now programs films for OSU’s Wexner Center)obatined a copy of this to screen at a private film festival/marathon that he used to put on. It was shown on a large screen TV in a basement den/living room, but the power was in no way diminished. The film left the entire room speechless, and it ranks up there as one of the most memorable cinematic experiences I’ve had.

The Entity came out a year before Poltergeist so I’m not sure how it can be a cheesy knock off of it.

Thanks Rider. You’re right. I should have checked IMDB on this one.

It was however saved from being shelved and thrown into obscurity by the popularity of Poltergeist.  I’m actually surprised the release dates are that close, I thought The Enity was made in the late 70’s.

Rider,

yes, I should have said something like “a cheesy flick that tried to cash in on the popularity of Polterqeist”. I actually saw The Entity in theaters when it was released and it did, indeed, suck, like many of Sidney J. Furie’s films.

this is beautiful. i like the way the soundtrack becomes visible, and also the way the editing and image manifest in the sound.
if you don’t know them already, try and track down a dvd of the optical soundtrack films of guy sherwin - he played (plays) a lot with that sound/image divide, and feels a lot like this in some instances.

by the way - am i being stoopid and missing something… the vimeo page with that film on says it’s by marc campbell…?

Rob, on Vimeo, whenever you upload a video, it automatically attributes it to you. If you look again you will see in the description of the video credit given to Peter Tscherkassky.

ah - i was being stupid - a weird voice in the back of my head told me you were being demure and had invented an avant garde nom de plume. need more sleep plainly.

Eoghan

Yes so right right about making the Man Ray connection.