2017 Directed by Heinz Emigholz
A film director confides in his interlocutor. He talks about the working process, about creative blocks, about artistic crises and expressive forces. At some point, the idea takes hold that this conversation could be turned into a film. And this is the very film we’re watching the two of them in.
[8]
If you know Heinz Emigholz's work primarily from the "Photography and Beyond" series of architecture films, all I can say is hold on to your hat. It's not that [Dialogue], one of four films in a new series called Streetscapes, is completely alien to the work Emigholz has been producing over the past twenty years. Space and architecture play a critical role in this new film. But [Dialogue], as the title suggests, reintroduces the element of human language.
Emigholz's earlier phase, which included films like Hotel (1975) and Demon (1977), often gave pride of place to language, but the architecture films have been semi-silent. Apart from the ambient noise of the street, or footsteps in an interior, the "Photography…
STREETSCAPES is a fascinating meditation on “what is a film” like nothing else I have seen before. It asks the question while also answering it exhaustively. This film is anything but slow. The shot and location changes more frequently than most conventional narrative films, always drawing your eye around the frame to orient yourself within time and space, as well as within the seemingly linear conversation. In the opening shots the of film he expresses the fatigue he is experiencing with his ability to document locations beautifully with minimal effort: what's next? His ideas on filming sans script are radical and exciting to me, even if he expresses them with a tone of cynicism, he also declares that filmmaking saved…
The entire Streetscapes series is a stab by Emigholz of shake things up about his Photography and Beyond series by adding an exterior element to his architecture investigation. The meeting of space and something Emigholz can bring it in. If Dialogue is the most successful of them it is because what he brings is mostly himself. The conversation is a dramatization of Emigholz therapy so what the movie proposes is a first person imposed over a series of public spaces (shot in Uruguay as a clear companion foe his study on Eladio Dieste). It is a proccess film given that Emigholz stand-in talks about his perceptions about filmmaking as much any past hang-up (creative blocking is part of the reason…
There are some enjoyable moments of meta fun in this work from Heinz Emigholz but they're buried under an excessive amount of pretentious conversation that rarely feels as important to the viewer as those onscreen think it is. Not for me.
Streetscapes (2017)
8/10
Too Ouroboros for its own sake, but ultimately gorgeous, simple in its approach and ultimately deep and even relatable at times for those who want to make somewhat of a living in this world of filmmaking, making projects, writing and shooting at every chance that you get. Emigholz (through his actor) reminded me of the Ruiz diaries and Raúl's urge for constantly making while analyzing himself and those around him. Playful but a bit drone-like in its performances.
I have many thoughts but for now I'll say that this was very helpful.
You make a film, life goes on, wait for the next film to come, you have an idea, get insecure, you talk to a friend, realise that there was nothing to be insecure about, you make a film, life goes on, repeat the proceedings for the rest of your life.
Philosophical and conceptual therapy on the artist and creation, all through dialogue. Even the very discussion of the film being turned into the film, sounds all very meta, and truthfully it is. It’s all a construct, fictionalised. Though with that knowledge it becomes, and feels illuminating, like these characters are actual real personas, real artist and therapist conversations. There are moments of self awareness, and playful filmmaking with the dialogue and imagery. The dialogue is set in many different architectural spaces, literally and metaphorically. If any thing, you enjoy and admire the architecture seen in the film, from a designer point of view I certainly did. The film is very aware of the trick it’s playing on the audience, but as I earlier mentioned, it becomes blurred and you fall into its reality. Documentary? Well it certainly is a dialogue worth having.
My Dinner with Heinz. It's a fascinating portrait of the director that's about as meta as humanly possible. Apparently, he wants to explain himself and address his critics. It gives insights into his other films and his process.
Heinz Emigholz breaks his mold and decides to study the nature of cinema, or how set/diegesis affects perception of narrative. This nearly continuous conversation often changes environment from one shot to the next with only a basic cut in between, but the way that bodies are positioned within the frame, within rooms, or outside of buildings allows subliminal dissonances to resonate nearly imperceptibly. The conversation itself is interesting as well, but unsurprisingly, it is the architecture that provides the most interesting character here.
See, I can give this work some sort of credit. Emigholz's films have been the most lifeless, uninteresting films I've ever seen, but in last year's Streetscapes he's taking a much more different approach while still retaining his obvious style. The director is using the character of the director as his own voice and the content of it all is certainly confessional and honest; for that I can respect it. It's still hopelessly dry and bland, the fascination with tilts and dutch angles still eludes me (these conversations often look so unnatural) but there's a steady sense of rhythm and pace to the way the dialogues are delivered that makes this work, unlike all of his others, bearable to sit through.
Still far from good, still fairly uninteresting, but it's a good change of pace.
![Streetscapes [Dialogue]](https://a.ltrbxd.com/resized/film-poster/3/7/2/8/3/8/372838-streetscapes-dialogue--0-230-0-345-crop.jpg?k=965740c73e)