Pictures then of her family, accompanied by excruciating noise. The mother standing in front of the door, looking out of the window: the family enjoying its Sunday Lunch in a sombrely panelled room, at afternoon coffee, or breakfast together in bed. Dore O., always at the edge of things, dreamy absent, or suddenly intercut, a crouching figure on a bed, turning to and from with her hair flowing. A picture that recurs as a leitmotif, like the hand emerging from a pit and clasping a lid that has been half pushed aside. superimpositions - silhouettes of Dore O. alone or with an indistinctly recognisable partner over a barren landscape, behind an overcast winter sky - have become rare in this film. The austere images tell more about the completely individual process of emancipation of a young woman than whole novels do. The fact that a woman was able to film this process with such self-confidence of form is evidence of an emancipation that is no less relevant for our society than more general socio-critical agitation.

还不错！看看吧！

Alaska is large and cold and slightly crazy. The film Alaska by Dore O. is small and cold and also slightly crazy. Dore O. is a German artist and an experimental film maker. Alaska is from 1968. It is a wordless film with a simple, droning soundtrack that sounds as if it is a piece for violin and refrigerator hum. (Possibly the hum is the result of age.) It may be about Alaska. It may be about the north. It may be about swimming in cold water. It cuts between images of water, images of stippled walls, and images of a beach. And people on the beach. And all the people are out of focus or cut in two. The water rolling in is superimposed with a shot of a woman—half in and half out—floating. Her body is cut in half not by camera frame, but by the effect. The water’s superimposition. More color, more detail, it asks for more of the camera’s, and the viewer’s attention. The body is half out-to-sea. Half lost-at-sea. Then there are the bodies out of focus. The camera sits on the beach, it’s focus fixed. The bodies approach from far away. They slowly gather into recognizable shapes—from a darkening spot to a pillar to a column with shifting colors at its base to a fuzzy biped. And they run through the focus, never allowing the camera more than a fleeting in-focus shot, or the viewer a chance to process and judge. The body fades in. The body fades out. Arms and legs may as well be smoke, and hair just a fog.

„Werner Nekes geht nicht von einer Musik aus, sondern schafft sich seinen Rhythmus selber, durch ein paar einfache, wenig variierte Klopftöne. Nach diesem Rhythmus montiert er die Aufnahme eines Mädchens, das vor einem Hintergrund in wohltuend grellen Hundertwasserfarben schaukelt. Er schneidet ohne Rücksicht auf den natürlichen, physikalischen Bewegungsablauf. Dadurch, dass er verschiedene Perspektiven, auch die der auf dem Kopf oder auf der Seite stehenden Kamera, ineinander schneidet, erreicht er einen neuen, völlig überzeugenden optischen Rhythmus.“

The first thing to strike you about this DVD release is its content: a single film, totalling only 10 minutes and 30 seconds, and absolutely no extras. Admittedly that film does come in two versions – with or without its burnt-in English subtitles – but this provides a choice present solely for language reasons; in all other respects both versions are completely identical. As such we’re not faced with the greatest of enticements – beyond the fact that this is already a disc which will sell only to niche audience – but then Beuys isn’t your typical offering. In spite of its barely there running time it manages to be a dense, playful and provocative work; it shouldn’t be gauged simply by the number of minutes it lasts for, but rather the number of repeat viewings it prompts. Indeed, once you’ve selected which version of the film you wish to watch the disc then happens to play on a continual loop – a fitting quality as you’ll wish to return to it immediately. Ostensibly, and as the title should hopefully have suggested, Beuys is a documentary on the German artist Joseph Beuys, a renowned figure in modern/contemporary art circles and one recently treated to a major retrospective at Tate Modern. This may put the film in the same category as, for example, Clouzot’s La Mystère Picasso, Rivers and Tides (on Andy Goldsworthy) or Right Out of History (on Judy Chicago), yet for each of their respective qualities these works offer essentially conventional records of their subjects. Beuys on the other hand takes a more conceptual approach and as a result perhaps shares a closer kinship with Gilbert and George’s contemporaneous feature The World of Gilbert and George. Here we find Beuys effectively given free rein – his is the only voice, indeed only sound, which we hear; he is the only person to appear onscreen, and in a single take at that; and even the opening credits seem unnaturally hasty in their efforts to move out of his way, having been written directly onto the celluloid and over in seconds – but crucially he doesn’t figure in the expected manner. Rather we find him facing a wall, with his back to the camera and placed in a spotlight so that he becomes almost a silhouette. Indeed, all we see are the hands behind his back and his equally stationary right ear, the rest of his body having been engulfed by a hat and sizeable coat. Under such circumstances he resembles nothing more than a big screen gangster, one in a firing line perhaps or an informant trapped in an intense spotlight. Moreover, the décor seem to match such an interpretation: the walls are painted white and are completely bare save for some electrical fittings which presumably no longer work; apart from Beuys himself the only other visible object is a radiator of standard persuasion. All told it appears that we’re in either a disused factory or some abandoned warehouse – either way it’s a stark environment, but also one teeming with atmosphere. So quite how do we take the film? Have directors Werner Nekes and Dore O. got Beuys in the firing line, forcing him to issue some “famous last words” as it were? And if so, are they this from a “friendly” perspective or perhaps something a little more aggressive? Certainly, he’s the star of the piece and gets his name in the title and even though we never see his face, would not a conventional ‘talking heads’ approach have been the more familiar, and therefore anonymous, approach? Indeed, in this instance he’s afforded a great deal of charisma, treating us to long pauses for maximum dramatic effect, sharing the attire, as said, of a movie star, positioned in such a way so that every movement becomes apparent, and, most importantly, able to command our attention from the very first syllable he utters. Of course, there’s a major possibility that Beuys’ conception would outweigh its content, but really this isn’t the case. Rather the film’s true heart lies in what its subject has to say for himself – his theory on art and perception, how this fits into his own artistic output, and the ramifications it will have in the future, during “the next cultural epoch”. The key question to ask ourselves is not whether the concept is more important than Beuys, but whether it has the desired effect. Had Beuys been a conventional documentary portrait would we be paying it so much attention? Would we return to it time and again? And would it still feel, even on the umpteenth viewing, as though it still had secrets to share?