We have learned that the moving images
actually never moved and this movement is only evoked by the inaction
of the human eye. Finovo by Claudio Winter is a photographic film
like Redfern by Trang Nguyen (who is also the editor of this film).
Like in Redfern, there are in Finovo very few moments with moved
images. The movement we mostly do not see is here much more evoked
through the soundtrack. Someone lights a cigarette. We see one image,
a cigarette and a lighter but the movement of the hand which lights
the cigarette is evoked through the sound of a lighter.
The images show among others a man who
rented a house in front of a graveyard in Berlin Schöneberg for
opening a flower shop and a small cafe which he calls Finovo a word
combination of end and beginning. Two homosexuals are taking care of
the graves of their late life partners. As the film seems to be like
a fleeting visit to this very graveyard and its cafe, for brief but
intense moments some individual human stories appear for a moment.
Fragments of human lives like short flashes.
In one of the very few moving images we
see a regional train passes by – like in a film by Yasujiro Ozu.
The things the persons in this film are
telling about complement the fragmentary images. One of the phenomenons of
Cinema is that it often can evoke more than it shows (or presents
through the sound). The montage of this moments is
poetic and analytical at the same time. It evokes hints to human
stories which go far beyond – for example the limited length of this film. At the same time a film like Finovo presents the elements of
which it is built.
I remember long time ago when I was
still in a film club I read a text by film critic Peter Kremski on
John Ford´s masterpiece The Searchers and one sentence is
still in my mind: “For John Ford, a funeral is a reunion of those
who are living.” The two men in Finovo who are remembering the close
persons they have lost are untinged of any religious motivation.
Their memories of the dear persons they have lost is part of their
mourning and this mourning is a needful work for those who live.
How many directors have said that
cinema deals often if not mostly with things which are gone. Martin
Scorsese said that and in Patricio Guzman´s Nostalgia de la Luz
(Nostalgia for the Light) an astronomer explains to the filmmaker
that according to light speed everything we see is already past.
That connects Guzman´s observation of women who are looking for the
human remains of their relatives which were killed during the
Pinochet dictatorship in Chile and the search of astronomers for far
distant stars which probably have gone in the moment they can see them through their telescopes.
This 13 minutes long film does not show
anything else than every day events, not more than some real people
meeting at a very concrete place. And yet it might be a more
inspiring occasion to reflect about life and cinema than a lot of
wise books which are already written.
In this now very manifold network of
more than 110 years cinema with all its currents and all what is
written, reflected or theorized about it - we who write on films are
often seduced to a kind of dullness in thinking almost everything has
being tried and performed. Films like Redfern by Trang Nguyen or
Finovo by Claudio Winter are teaching us quite a lesson. Even though
it is hard to put the finger on it but they have the flair of
pioneering work through its own unique authenticity. To approach
answers to the famous question “what is cinema?” both of these
films remind me that is nothing you can learn from books or archived
knowledge alone but that cinema is an eternal quest.
Both films belong to my most exciting
discoveries I made last year.
Rüdiger Tomczak
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