World Mirror Cinema

The last work of Gustav Deutsch is composed of three episodes situated in Vienna of 1912, Surabay of 1929 and Porto of 1930. The experimenting director uses old silent movies footage to spark a new life in them. He focuses on shots taken in front of cinema entrances randomly choosing passers–by whom he promotes to be the main characters of his mini–stories. The spectator falls through the picture into their private lives telling the story not only of themselves but also of their time. Everyone's portrait becomes an insight of an interesting fate, which is the key to historical cognition and the mysteries of a film mechanism. However, rather than a surreal plaything, the extraordinary visual experience supported by a separate musical sequence is a rich hypertext. We follow the train of director's thoughts, who sees a film as a mirror of the history and its secondary characteristic. Formally a perfect montage reflects collective memory dealing with the issue of universal interconnection, passing and repetition, associations between all space–times, showing both transience and lasting. The spectator sinks into a rich palipmsest, uncovering each layer, circling above the world to submerge under its surface at last, passes freely through the past, stress and dailiness, becoming a part of the whole.