Makimono is an Asian roll painting depicting a landscape. The subject of the film is the language of film itself, its mutability and its influence on the viewer's vision and thinking. While the film gradually progresses the viewer is gently invited to ref

Makimono
1974, 16mm, color Iso, 38m,
Sound by Anthony Moore. With: Christoph Heller, Ingrid Kamowski, Rona Nekes, Dore O.
Unfolding of a continuously varying impression of the representation of a landscape.
MAKIMONO reflects the horizontal and vertical legibility of film. The progression of filmic language.

"One can see again the very beautiful MAKIMONO of Werner Nekes already presented at the Cinematheque Francaise ... is beyond the experimental. It's a work which gives itself as - and gives us -the joy and excitement of fullness." - Helmuth Fenster, L’Art Vivant (Aus: canyon cinema, film/video catalog 2000)

Makimono is an Asian roll painting depicting a landscape. The subject of the film is the language of film itself, its mutability and its influence on the viewer's vision and thinking. While the film gradually progresses the viewer is gently invited to reflect on the development of the film in its expressive potential.

"The title refers to Japanese landscape painting on rolls. Furthermore it indicates the film's theme, the balance of colors (blurred tones of blue, green and grey) and the type of montage that gives priority to continuity of development rather than to disruption and contrast. This continuity is achieved by dissolvings and double exposures and by extremely long pans. The rhythm accelerates: a meditation on landscape, which unfolds before the eye or is visually paced out, gives way to fluidity and pure motion, to a feeling of dizziness, the result of two contrasting camera movements. The world resembles a reflection in the water; then, however, rapid montage creates a calligraphy consisting of the quick and sharp black strokes of a Hartung painting, until one finally arrives at the glittering simplicity of an early movie where each frame still retains the weight of its individual tracks, of earth and of the world. Anthony Moore's Soundtrack strikingly agrees with the images presented and by means of three consecutive modulations bestows unto them the structure of a concerto." (Helmuth Fenster, L'Allemagne à Knokke. In: LArt Vivant, Paris, Feb. 1975).