Film description

Painting techniques such as divisionism and, later, pointillism used spots of pure colour which mix on the eye retina to create complementary colours. Putting into practice Louis Delluc’s postulate that ‘film is painting with light’, The Amalgam is another step on Werner Nekes’ journey towards revealing the painting possibilities of the cinematic medium. In four short episodes, Knot, Net, Texture and Pattern, Nekes creates cinematic tableaux that have much in common with painting. He experiments with various film reels, technical and montage effects, all the while exploring the exclusively cinematic factor of movement. The first film is a construction of freeze-frames and slow motion that forces viewers to question whether the illusion of movement is generated by the shimmering points on the screen or the actual movement of the film reel. In Net and Texture, multiple exposures and loops of nude models give the images an abstract quality, drawing attention to the play of light. In the final film, the director returns to pointillism to fully reveal his conception of cinematic painting through a series of takes of various landscapes and figures that bring the viewer into contact with unfamiliar visual sensations.