Kurt Kren

"Much has been written about the abstract, serial, musical, structural or mathematical nature of Kurt Kren's films, their affinity to painting, poetry or twelve-tone music; but too much concentration on their structure and rhythm has eclipsed the films' objectivisation, their almost documentary quality. The compact and artistic interweaving of the fragments of reality being expressed - which may be glimpses out of a window, paths, trees, walls, the changing of the seasons, faces, or the human body in motion - as well as the way they are filmed, processed and arranged can often go unrecognized even if each film is seen several times. The methods used by Kren [include] extreme multiple exposure, individual shots, time lapse, the use of filters and masks, alternating between positive and negative film, blurred images, imposing scratches and drawings on soundtracks and complicated cutting rhythms based on specifically pre-formulated diagrams [and] a variety of technical experiments and inventions which he has evolved over the years. And yet, appreciating Kurt Kren's films is not a question of dissecting his technique, recognising their richness of innovation or analyzing their rhythm. To understand these film it is not necessary to see through them but to feel and perceive them as real.

"... Someone once said, 'The greatness of filmmaking lies in being modest enough to realize that one is confined to taking photographs.' Kurt Kren's films are neither paintings, nor poems nor music; they are not even typically film, as the term is used in the degenerate rhetoric of most modern film artists. It is this self-awareness which constitutes their greatness." - Hans Hurch