L'arrivée

Peter Tscherkassky is an Austrian avant-garde filmmaker who works exclusively with found footage. All of his work is done with film and heavily edited in the darkroom, rather than relying on technological modes. The first of his Cinemascope trilogy of short films is a fragmented glimpse of images pulsating with chaotic rhythm as they fight white margins for room in Tscherkassky's palette. Mirrored frames being split by white margin and trying to reassemble again like the poles of a magnet, a train approaching station and colliding with itself in white-hot blistering chaos. There's not much else that can be said for the 2 minute short film other than it definitely shows an artist pursuing his unique vision. As a prelimary of things to come, I'd say Le Arrivee is an alluring watch, rough yet oddly compelling.

For some reason, you've got to admire any filmmaker who dedicates his entire career to re-editing other peoples' films. Peter Tscherkassky has done just that, and 'L'arrivée (1998)' is my first taste of his work. Manipulating "found footage" from Terence Young 'Mayerling (1968),' this two-minute short is an overt homage to the Lumière brothers, visually suggesting 'Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1896).' I've never really been taken by the notion of Deconstructionist cinema – that which explores the inherent artificiality of the film medium – but I found some interest in this particular piece. The picture seemingly opens without any film in the projector, showing only a white background with the far edge of the image creeping ever-so-sightly into frame. Owen Land's 'Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering,… etc (1966)' was excruciating because nothing happened, but Tscherkassky gives us the semblance of a narrative, something to anticipate: we urge forward the creeping film image as we might urge Jimmy Stewart up the stairs in 'Vertigo (1958).'

Tscherkassky is remarking upon cinema's use of visual narrative, a well- worn formula that takes us back to Auguste and Louis Lumière. Anticipation, Crisis, Resolution: the camera awaits the arrival of a train, identically to how we, the audience, await the arrival of the film image into frame. Once the picture has settled into its correct groove, the train collides with its mirror-image, and the film negative almost destroys itself in a gut-wrenching tangle of film reels. Out of this chaos emerges actress Catherine Deneuve, who alights from the train, apparently unharmed by this temporal disruption of her own existence, and falls into the arms of her lover, Omar Sharif. Against all logic, out of this violence has materialised a happy ending, a final kiss offering resolution where there had been no hope of any. Critic Stefan Grissemann describes 'L'arrivée' as "a film in the process of approaching." That sounds about right; it's a film whose very existence provides its own narrative.