‘You hear it everywhere: Cinema is tipping over – its epic and dramatic forms are spilling over into television, avant-garde and experimental films have fled to the galleries, and all the images that once belonged to it are now available everywhere, anytime. At the Austrian Film Museum, we tend to refrain from such sweeping and simple-minded swan songs. For this very reason, we are honoured to participate in Vertical Cinema – a project committed to taking one step at a time. Instead of trying to tip cinema in its entirety into the digital netherworld, this project is content with just tipping the screen – observing how an artform changes if you respectfully chafe at its edges.’  – Alexander Horwath, Director of the Austrian Film Museum

Vertical Cinema

Kontraste Cahier #3

Edited by Mirna Belina & Sonic Acts, Amsterdam

Designed by Bitcaves
80 pp., full colour, illustrated, English text
Sonic Acts Press 2013
ISBN: 978-90-810470-7-4

Vertical Cinema is a unique project featuring a series of ten commissioned vertical films made in 2013 by internationally renowned experimental filmmakers and audiovisual artists.

This monumental screening of their 35 mm vertical cinemascope films premieres at the 2013 edition of the Kontraste Dark As LightFestival, where Kontraste Cahier #3 will be presented as well. It includes texts about the works by the participants in the project: Joost Rekveld, Tina Frank, Björn Kämmerer, Gert-Jan Prins & Martijn van Boven, Manuel Knapp, Johann Lurf, Rosa Menkman, Billy Roisz & Dieter Kovačič, Makino Takashi & Telcosystems and Esther Urlus.

The cahier also features an extensive introduction to the rich history of expanded and exploded cinema, by professor, curator and author Timothy Druckrey (US), who guides us through the mutations of the burgeoning moving image, fuelled by the technological growth of the medium over the last 50 years.

Timothy Druckrey is an independent curator, lecturer, writer in the fields of media history and technology and a Director of the Graduate Photographic and Electronic Media program at the Maryland Institute, College of Art.

Mirna Belina is an independent curator who writes about experimental film and film as art. She collaborates regularly with Sonic Acts.

Vertical Cinema is the third Kontraste Cahier in a series edited by Sonic Acts. It is published on the occasion of the 2013 Kontraste Festival, Dark As Light, 10–13 October, Krems, Austria, curated by Sonic Acts and produced by Kontraste.