“Telscher’s rich, original, witty, subtle, and partly cryptic work is characterized by a flair for deliberate technical imperfections, for the obsessive use of fragments of all kinds of music, and for eclectic references to the history of film and photography. His last film, “La Reprise”, appeared in 1995. Since 1996, Klaus Telscher has been confined to a wheelchair..“ Noll Brinckmann
Klaus Telscher was always striving for the perfect image, the perfect narrative structure (his films do tell stories of a sort), the perfect timing. The films provoke questions, questions Telscher often asked himself—always in doubt whether they could be asked in this form. This led to the constant changes to which he submitted his films, sometimes as late as after their first public screening.
The retrospective does justice to this workstyle in that the films are not put together chronologically, and there are even omissions from the complete works. Instead, an attempt is made to recreate Klaus’s cinematic quest and to relate images and places to each other to which he constantly returned in the course of his artistic career.
To mark Klaus Telscher’s 60th birthday, a DVD containing his complete works was released in collaboration with the Arsenal, Institute for Film and Video Art, Filmgalerie 451, Berlin and EMAF, which digitised the 16mm films. The DVD is available for purchase at the festival. The films will be screened in the original 16mm format.
