FILM IST. A GIRL & A GUN (2009), de Gustav Deutsch

Gustav Deutsch viajou por vários arquivos cinematográficos mundiais, numa pesquisa quase arqueológica por excertos de filmes obscuros, remontando-os em sufocantes narrativas visuais que impelem à reflexão sobre temáticas universais e contemporâneas.



Civilization is represented largely by glamorous clips from between-the-wars Central European movies, spliced together so that seduction segues into rape and escalates to murder. In the penultimate movement, everyone is wearing masks—whether to attend balls, protect themselves from poison gas, or engage in bestiality. By the end, sex and violence, love and death, are virtually interchangeable.







Film Ist. a Girl & a Gun is not subtle, but its literalism — which refines the avant-primitivism of older Viennese artists — is its strength. Deutsch has a sense of motion pictures as a form of sex magic. This haunting movie is suffused in libidinal energy, with more than a whiff of sulfur. The pornographic images, many drawn from the Kinsey Institute collection, power Film Ist. even as Eros is shown as the driving force of human history and creation itself.

J. Hoberman, in Village Voice.