A Haunted House: The ominous abodes of Christoph Girardet and Matthias Müller, by Matthew Cole Levine
Their approaches to found footage, at once likeminded and singular, have served Christoph Girardet and Matthias Müller well since 1999, during which time the two of them have collaborated on nearly thirty films and photographic works. Varied metaphors and modes of inquiry have been used to analyze their oeuvre: to some, Girardet and Müller provide a “suggestive continuum,” exposing the patterns of light and darkness, absence and presence, by which cinema operates; to others, the filmmakers dissect the body of film history and of the cinematic apparatus, suggesting the moving image as a corporeal grouping of skin, guts, brains, and bones to pick apart. Still others see their work as “poignant commentar[ies] on longing, space and mystery” or as dreamlike excavations of cinematic mythology. They’re all correct, but to me, what sets Girardet and Müller apart—what elevates their work from formalism to radical humanism—is the central metaphor of the house as a site of horror and desire, an analogue for cinematic apparatus itself, and a refraction of the political ideologies lying at the heart of late capitalism, as filtered through the visceral joys of the moving image. Through their films, Girardet and Müller invite us into the haunted house of cinema, which burrows its way into our brains like a possessing spirit, violence masquerading as pleasure.
Personne: The disappearance of the white man, by Catherine Russell
Fenestra Rotunda: A score of notes and memories following the viewing of Girardet & Müller’s Meteor, by Stefano Miraglia
A Conversation with Christoph Girardet & Matthias Müller, by Alejandro Bachmann
ESSAYS Hitching a Ride to Heaven: The confessional as found footage, by Clint Enns Abbas Kiarostami’s Final Frame—an elegy, by Scott MacDonald Retracted Cinema, by Peter Freund Being (or Seeming to Be) Center Stage, by Jonathan Rosenbaum
DÉMONTAGE: ATRAPADO EN EL SUEÑO DE OTRO, by Ernesto Baca
ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS More Is More: Paul Cronin’s A Time to Stir, by Scott Macdonald Artavazd Pelechian’s La Nature : When cinema writes disaster, by Anna Doyle Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream : A conversation with Frank Beauvais, by Nazaré Soares Secrets as Surfaces : Prayers in memory of two American filmmakers, by Pablo Marín When Forever Dies : An interview with Peet Gelderblom, by Joshua Wille
BOOK REVIEWS Absence in Cinema: The art of showing nothing (Justin Remes. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020), by César Ustarroz Film and Art After Cinema (Lars Henrik Gass. Zagreb: Multimedijalni institut, 2019), by César Ustarroz
ARTWORKS by John Baldessari, Lola Dupre, Jean-Jacques Martinod, Audrey Jeamart, Miriam Tölke, Bill Noir, Monique Vettraino.
