Lagado

An experimental film about the interpenetration of various levels of communication, dealing with the relationship of the pictorial functions to those of sound (direct sound).    

"… What sounds rather bookish and intimidating, in fact unfolds an enormous sensual stimulus on screen. In more than 20 sequences, based in part on work by Stifter and Camus, Hamburg's experimental film director and a number of students from Braunschweig and Göttingen demonstrate a higher school of hearing and seeing. With manipulations of sight and sound, which are at times highly complex and mathematically precise, he shows the tension between optical and acoustic elements, inventing ever new combinations from which an abstract poetry issues forth. Nekes works with single frame mechanism and multiple copying of the images, thus defamiliarizing the sound at the same time. The title of the film pertains to Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels'. Lagado is the name of the academy in which scientists of the most diverse disciplines work at strange projects.”

-Hans C. Blumenberg, Die Zeit, March 18, 1977

1977 - 35/16mm - color - 79min - VO - English subtitles

Team: Werner Nekes, Dore 0. Bernd Upnmoor, Harm Abrahams, Götz Vincentz