Alaska

1968
Country: Germany
Duration: 18 mins
Colour,
Sound: Opt.
Available Format/s: 16mm

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Sound: Violin, blowdrier, several sounds from the “Concord Sonata” by Charles Ives.”An emigration film: a dream of myself, the consequences of the act with society.” (Dore O.)Alaska by Dore O. is a beautiful film, which makes it at first glance a bit suspect. But the beauty has a catch to it – it exists only on the surface, beneath it hide horror and fear. For Dore O., beauty is a part of reality. For her there exists a beauty in fear in the same way that for Genet there exists a beauty in murder. Alaska is a filmed dream, but devoid of the simplistic metaphors taken from psychoanalysis, metaphors which rationalise dreams and thus mistakenly facilitate their interpretation. Alaska is a film which cannot be interpreted, it can be experienced. – Klaus Baderkerl, FILMKRITIK, 1969. Taking this film is more difficult. On the other hand, as the “taking in” of this film is limited to the very pleasure of recognising structures, techniques, or principles of form, the experience becomes a multi-sided, differentiated, incredible process. What happens in this film cannot be put into words. While both conventional and formalistic films can be equally pinned down by the film critic (exposition of either the storyline or the structure), about an imagist film such as Alaska one can only say that it is located in the ante-chamber of language, even of consciousness. Dore O. communicates something substantial, something concrete: images, forms, movements, whose interplay presages something yet to be comprehended, something yet to come. Still more is communicated: a utopian impetus, a sense of expectation. The beauty of this film thus cannot be consumed, it can only be experienced in expectations of the pre-conscious. – Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, FILMKRITIK.

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