In the Beginning was the Eye <<
     
     
  Reviews  
     
"In the Beginning was the Eye" is, with its 45 minutes of abundant avant-garde research, the figurehead of the Director's Fortnight in Cannes 2003. It took five years to produce this cinematic UFO essentially made up of hundreds of postcards. At times a dreamlike vision, at times political, philosophical and even culinary, the film is technically perfect. The stunning sound and visuals and the hypnotic editing ensure that you don't get bored for a second....  
 
 
Martin Granica, Repérages, Paris
  
 
 
 
 
 
Imagine a portrait of Austria created by Jan Svankmajer and David Lynch: This will give you an idea of Bady Minck's fantastic film work entitled "In the Beginning was the Eye". When a writer investigates Austria through the images presented by postcards, the landscapes around Erzberg and Salzburg become something between a dream and a nightmare. And the words on the back of the cards seep into the scene as whispers. These are terrible and painful texts, written by unknown hands over the course of time. Tension develops between picture and text, culture and landscape...  >>
 
 
Hans Schifferle, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich
  
     
     
 
Bady Minck's avant-garde film "In the Beginning was the Eye" participates in a typically Austrian massacre play but sets itself apart through the strength of its talent and focus. Armed with an avalanche of postcards, the film delves deep into a world of clichés, revealing the horrors the picture-perfect surfaces conceal.
  
 
Jean-Philippe Tessé, Cahiers du cinéma, Paris
  
 
 
 
 
 
Bady Minck re-evaluates irreverent worlds of images in the form of thousands of postcards whose ardently kitschy views of Austria are re-animated by the avant-garde filmmaker. Her cinematic narrative of a poet's search for images provides the framework for a critical reconquest of an idyllic Alpine landscape. Using breathtaking montage work and elaborate film technology, Bady Minck penetrates deep into the sultry colour of the postcards without succumbing to their camped-up charms.
 
 
Daniel Kothenschulte, Frankfurter Rundschau
  
 
 
 
 
 
"In the Beginning was the Eye" is an outstanding poetic essay on the relationship between image and text, kitschy postcards and Austria's past.
 
 
Marcy Goldberg, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich
  
     
     
 
The masterpiece of this year's Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in Cannes was undoubtedly Bady Minck's "In the Beginning Was the Eye". The film starts by gazing out of an eyelid, which opens and closes, turning us into voyeurs, ready to manipulate objects and facts. What follows is a very interesting work of memory. Events of the past, most notably of the Nazi era, discreetly emerge from their shadows. The filmmaker covers the tracks: we don't know if it's the poet who remembers, the texts on the postcards are being read out loud or if the director herself is commenting on the past. Neutral images and ideas of "home" are interwoven with suppressed recollections. The irony with which the film deals with stereotypes is reminiscent of the films of Syberberg and his way of playing with clichés. We will surely hear from Bady Minck again!
  
 
Raphaël Bassan, Bref, Paris
 
     
 
 
 
In Minck's race of word against image, the image is the obvious winner. Single frame shots, dissolves and language employed as a musical element in a fast-paced composition of words and images are combined to create a film which goes against conventions and expectations. "In the Beginning Was the Eye" is a film about story-telling and remembering, about the volatility of language and image and the tricks our sensual perception plays on us - a philosophical consideration of reproduction and reality, identity, nature and civilization. >>
 
 
Irmgard Schmidmaier, D'Land, Luxembourg
  
     
     
 
The most subtle and strange film shown at the IFDA Documentary Festival Amsterdam tells the tale of a poet who is pondering the eternal questions of origin and meaning like a modern Faust. Just like the picture postcards the film has two sides: behind the idealised image on the front hides a "Heil Hitler" while voices whisper to us stories from a different kind of Austria.
  
 
Dana Linssen, NRC Handelsblad, Amsterdam
  
     
     
 
"In the Beginning was the Eye" challenges the idea of a picture-perfect Austria as a writer probes the country by comparing it to a range of postcards. The kitsch tourist images are reinterpreted by Minck to combat national cliches.
  
 
Cathy Meils, Variety
  
     
 
 
 
Bady Minck's avant-garde film breaks through the conservative norms of documentary filmmaking. The film reexamines a world of banal images on thousands of landscape postcards that depict the Austrian Alps and the Salzburg province. A film that surprises both the eye and the mind at every turn - it's about memory, language and the senses that deceive us. "In the Beginning was the Eye" is the "Alice Through the Looking Glass" of documentary avant-garde films, which will leave you overwhelmed.
  
 
Doc Aviv - Tel Aviv Documentary Film Festival
  
 
 
 
 
 
In the beginning was the word, it says in the Bible. Filmmaker Bady Minck does not believe this. She has made a beautiful work about the tension between two forces in film: the word and the image. Themes run through the film about the relationship between man with nature, between appearance and reality. Cinematographically, and with style, this unconventional, alienating film is astonishing.
  
 
Peter Wintonnick
IDFA - International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam
  
 
 
 
 
 
"In the Beginning was the Eye" is a work too strange and beautiful to be explained in words. Bady Minck's film of brilliant spirals and frames leaves us tumbling. To the last frame, it teaches us something very important: wonder at the mechanics and magic of images.
  
 
The 20th Annual Olympia Film Festival Washington
  
 
 
     
 
With the help of some three thousand postcards and tourist photos filmmaker Bady Minck takes us on a affectionate, ironic journey through Austria. On the way, she challenges the way we see, using camera techniques in anomalous, unexpected ways.
  
 
Brisbane International Film Festival
  
     
     
 
2003 has turned out to be a particularly strong year for Austria, which has a national record five films in varying parts of the Festival de Cannes. Looking to be especially intriguing is Bady Minck's documentary "In the Beginning Was the Eye," an avant-garde exercise using thousands of Alpine view postcards. That film finds itself in the Fortnight, the longtime rival to the main Cannes festival.
  
 
Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
  
     
 
 
 
"In the Beginning was the Eye" is a film about narration and remembering, about the volatility of language and image and the tricks our sensual perception plays on us. Lurid postcards and filmed images of the exact locations are melded and morphed into one another until it becomes impossible to determine reality from brightly rendered tourist trap. Digital technology is employed to blur the lines and create impossible movements and transformations. Multiple exposures, time-lapse and slow motion assume an anomalous role that functions in ways completely contrary to standardised expectations and habits of seeing. Taking the rigidity of postcard motifs as a starting point, the film engages in a programme of revitalisation, a re-animation that fills static people and things with life.
  
 
Melbourne International Film Festival
  
 
 
 
 
 

Inclasificable. No le cabe otro adjetivo a este pequeño y delicioso ensayo sobre los paisajes alpinos y los turistas que por allí descansan del trajín del año. Bady Minck trabaja con material descartable - viejas fotos y postales - y construye con él un monumento al kitsch turístico, utilizando toda la tecnología digital disponible como si se tratara de un sistema de rejuvenecimiento para recuerdos. El resultado es hipnótico y absurdamente bello, al tiempo que nos descubre que los poblados y ciudades también tienen un alma.

Unclassifiable. No other adjective fits this little and delicious essay on Alpine landscapes and tourists that rest thereabout from the year's commotion. Bady Minck works with disposable material - old pictures and postcards - and builds with it a monument to touristic kitsch, using all digital technology available as if it were a rejuvenating system for memories. The result is hypnotic and absurdly beautiful, at the same time as it reveals to us that towns and cities also have a soul.

  
 
Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente
  
     
     
 
"In the Beginning was the Eye" takes us on a time-travel using images of an iconic mountain found on postcards. The historic imprint of political realities and human fates are rendered visible onto the idealized landscapes.
  
 
Fly Stories Thailand
  
     
 
 
 
Using the most delicious ingredient, old post cards, this film concocts something beautiful that brings a new flavor to a historical subject. There is a place for creative historical documentaries, isn't there?!
  
 
INPUT 2005 Festival, San Francisco
  
 
 
 
 
 
A film that makes us question the way in which we view cinema, art and life. It ponders the idea of time in relation to the film image - are the images dead or do they have a special life? "In the Beginning was the Eye" is a boldly experimental vision that examines our relationship with culture and image, taking us on a thoughtful journey that never fails to amaze or inform.
  
 
Leeds International Film Festival
  
     
     
 
Echoes of Marker's Sans Soleil with the extensive use of stills and location shooting, but the similarities end there. It was interesting when it brought the present into the past, turning the postcards of European mountainside's into the reality of the present. The music was often good, evoking the proper nostalgic yet energetic tone, creating the feeling of a fleeting past that is impossible to grasp outside the context of existing photographs.
  
 
www.cinematicreflections.com
  
     
     
 
A search for the secret history inscribed onto brightly-colored alpine vacation postcards, "In the Beginning was the Eye" mixes nostalgic longing with darker instrospection and amazing bread sculpture animation.
  
 
Anne Reecer, CinemaTexas
  
     
     
 
The language of the document - and particularly its veracity - are often challenged in re-apppropriated work. Bady Minck formulates a connection between otherwise disparate elements, creating a mesmeric journey through the Austrian landscape via objects which evidently share a common subject - namely the landscape itself - but were never originally envisaged as forming part of a narrative. Her use of hundreds of found postcards (which in its sheer scale is similar to artist Tom Phillips' survey of postcards in his book The Postcard Century) doesn't so much present an 'altered document' as catalogue and order a hundred different versions of the same reality; an encyclopædic record of the landscape, of minutely different shots of the same tourist attractions, distinguishable as they speed past only by the different seasons, or alternative camera angles. Sometimes the only discernible difference is that of the variation in colour saturation in camera films over time.
  
 
Adam Pugh, AURORA (Norwich International Animation Film Festival)
  
     
     
 
Forestill deg Jean-Pierre Jeunets univers slik vi kjenner det fra Delicatessen og Den fabelaktige Amelie fra Montmartre parret med Røyksopps postkortvideo til "Eple", og du vil i det minste ha dannet deg en visuell idé om hvilken fantastisk opplevelse Bady Mincks film er. Dette er en film som sprenger alle tradisjonelle genrebåser: Kortfilm, eksperimentfilm, animasjon, dokumentar? Ingen begrep er fyllestgjørende. En frenetisk fantasi med røtter i virkeligheten, kanskje, eller som kritikeren Marc Ries beskrev det: "Et komplekst verk lokalisert mellom arkeologi og hedonisme". "In the Beginning was the Eye" er i alle fall en film om det å se, og om måter å se på. Dikteren Bodo Hell prøver å bryte løs fra sin verden av ord og trenge gjennom bildet av det østerrikske fjell-landskapet, slik det presenteres på turistvennlige postkort. Men jo flere avbildninger av alpelandskapet både han og vi får se, jo mer og jo mindre virkelig synes det å være.
  
 
Norsk Filminstitutt, Cinemateket, Oslo
  
     
     
 
Imagine Jean Pierre Jeunet's universe as we know it from "Delicatessen" and "The Fabulous Destiny of Amelie Poulain", paired with Røyksopp's videoclip "Apple" that's made up entirely of postcards – then you get an idea of what a fantastic visual experience Bady Minck's film has turned out to be. A film that transcends all traditional genres: short film, experimental film, animation, documentary - none of these words is a sufficient description. A frenetic phantasy with roots in reality, or as critic Marc Ries has put it, a complex oeuvre located between archaeology and hedonism. "In the Beginning was the Eye" is a film about vision and different ways of seeing and looking at things. The poet Bodo Hell tries to break out of his world of words and into the Austrian alpine landscape as it is represented on tourist-friendly postcards. But as we get to see more and more images of mountains and alpine scenery, this landscape starts to seem concurrently more and less real.
  
 
Norwegian Film Institute, Cinematheque, Oslo
  
     
 
 
 
The camera acts as a winking eye spying into a poet's workroom. Books are stacked to the ceiling, and the poet moves agilely between typewriters and shelves, leafs through books or, like Alice, enters a looking-glass. Bodo Hell cuts a restless figure, a man of the word setting off on a journey into the images or behind them. Dominated by its artificial gaze from the very beginning, this film becomes even more technically complex in its middle - in a rhythmic montage, innumerable postcard motifs rain down upon the viewer, which the protagonist then enters as if they were real landscapes. >>
 
 
Dominik Kamalzadeh, Der Standard, Vienna
  
 
 
 
 
 
"In the Beginning was the Eye" creates a typology of movement which talks from the very "heart" of the cinema - multiple exposures, single frame techniques, time-lapse and slow motion have assumed an anomalous role, that functions in ways completely contrary to standardized expectations and habits of seeing.
Bodo Hell, as a kind of "deus ex cathedra" or hovering spirit, makes the things and texts "from" his books move. He animates them and gives them a soul, becomes the demiurge of a journey through unaccustomed topography. Bady Minck stages something that can almost be called the aura of the landscapes and cities, leading thousands of postcards in a rhythmic dance that simultaneously de-codes and amuses. Starting out from the rigidity of the postcard motives, the film engages in a programme of revitalization, a re-animation that fills the people and things with life.
The present is, so to say, played into the cards. The skilful fades function as a re-calibration of what is regarded as real and what is "spectral". The principle of filmic movement is changed by remarkable images which have never been seen before and by new applications. Not one single shot of the film is "real" i.e. subject to the conventional 24 frames per second. The narrative of movement and change expands in a new direction into a complex oeuvre located between archaeology and hedonism.
 
 
Marc Ries, Wien & Luxembourg
  
 
 
 
 
 
A poet, locked into his den, in a cocoon of books and leaves, left at the mercy of words whispering to him from out of nowhere, or somewhere. On the empty pages of a book a mountain formation forms, prompting the poet and ourselves to embark on a journey through landscapes, landscapes whose history is revealed to be a bizarre layered object consisting of numerous postcard pictures superimposed on each other. Bodo Hell, the visual traveller, becomes part of this breathtakingly precise spatial composition, becomes a picture on a postcard and thereby the object of observation of the viewer's eye, the eye that Bady Minck navigates through the artificial "naturalness" of arranged Austrian landscapes in a virtuoso way. At the end of the journey the poet stays behind as his own (photographic) representation, two-dimensional, and helplessly at the mercy of a nature that, being a "matter of view", radically evades him...
 
 
Robert Buchschwenter, Vienna
  
 
 
 
 
 
Nok en gang har vi med surrealisme med opphav i det østerrikske Amour Fou Filmproduktion GmbH å gjøre. Denne gang er det ikke en franskmann, men en kvinne fra Luxemburg som står bak kamera og manus. Bady Minck heter hun og opererer i grenseland mellom filmkunsten og andre kunstarter. Hvis du kan tenke deg et portrett av Østerrike laget av Jan Svankmajer og David Lynch, inspirert av DR. CALIGARIS KABINETT, finner du Bady Mincks retning og prosjekt for "I BEGYNNELSEN VAR BLIKKET". Dette er Østerrike sett gjennom bilder fra gamle postkort med motiver fra Erzberg og Salzburg. Og disse motivene blir både drømmer og mareritt.
  
 
 
 
Once more we are dealing with surrealism mady by Austrian filmproduction Amour Fou. This time, instead of a Frenchman, the director and writer is a woman from Luxembourg. Her name is Bady Minck and her work is situated on the borderline of film art and other art forms. Imagine a portrait of Austria created by Jan Svankmajer and David Lynch, inspired by "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". This will give you an idea of the direction Bady Minck's project is taking. This portrait of Austria is formed by the images of old postcards as the landscapes around Erzberg and Salzburg province become something between a dream and a nightmare.
  
 
Bergen International Film Festival
  
     
     
 
Ad aprire la rassegna sarà "In the Beginning Was the Eye" di Bady Minck, opera tra narrazione e memoria, fugacità del linguaggio e sensazioni, che grazie ad un montaggio prodigioso e all'utilizzazione di una tecnica cinematografica complessa, penetra i cromatismi delle immagini in cartolina, ed esplora la linea di demarcazione tra lingua e universo visivo. A seguire sarà offerto un cocktail, preludio alle proiezioni successive.
  
 
Io Isabella International Film Week
  
 

 

  
 
 
 
Biblia uczy, ze na poczatku bylo Slowo. Bady Mink ma wlasna koncepcje poczatku wszechrzeczy. Stworzyla piekny film o napieciu pomiedzy narracja slowna a obrazem. Pisarz Bodo Hell, glówna osoba w filmie, przy pomocy pocztówek przyglada sie historii Austrii. Z kolekcji 15 000 starych pocztówek autor wykorzystuje 1800. Watki dotycza relacji pomiedzy czlowiekiem i natura, pomiedzy forma przedstawiania rzeczywistosci i nia sama. Widoki na pocztówkach sa czesto "retuszowane". Brzydkie zabudowania i drogi o duzym natezeniu ruchu sa "wymazywane" z idealnego obrazu Austrii. Krótkie teksty wysylane bliskim kilkadziesiat lat temu tworza kontrapunkty z widokami z tych samych pocztówek. Pocztówki przelatuja przez ekran, kamera wchodzi w miejsca, które byly niegdys fotografowane, zapisane tresci odczytywane sa brzmiacym chwilami wrecz zlowieszczo szeptem. Oryginalny styl i wyjatkowy temat zdecydowanie wyrózniaja ten niesamowity film.
  
 
Warsaw Doc Review Best of Documentary
  
 
 
 
 
 
Bodo Hell struggling with the dimensions: The writer breaks out of his world of words and tries to penetrate the surface of Austrian picture postcards in order to get into the very body of the landscape. He slips into a postcard picture, wanders through a labyrinth of cliché pictures, and embarks on a highspeed race through mountains and valleys at 160 postcards per minute. At the end Bodo succeeds in imagining a landscape himself, and even in entering it; but during his leap into the body of the landscape he loses his corporeality - the poet is reduced to the flatness of a two-dimensional figure on a picture and is left at the mercy of the wild landscape.
 
 
Synopsis
  
 
 
 
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