Safety Film

In this early found footage film (made long before this type of film-making was "in" in Austria) Scheugl proves how adventuresome a cinema may be which dares to take itself seriously. Once again, Hans Scheugl has been able to keep the balance between two realities: the "primary reality," which in this case, is material from a Hollywood Western that Scheugl has adopted, and without simply "abstracting" from it or destroying, or negating it or anything like that, has succeeded in maintaining the plot suspense of the original material´s individual scenes so that it remains powerful and yet is complimented by the reality of the "film suspense" developed by Scheugl, this being the suspense which inhabits the entire film and cinema apparatus and each and everyone of its specific possibilities. The Western is then brought back to life through the use of subtle rhythmic work (i.e. inserting black leaders), and playing with positive and negative material, etc. Therefore, the question we would have to pose with Scheugl, who cuts in, between the close-ups of the stars on the silver screen, his own shots of the outside of a cinema, would be: Where (in film) do the real dangers (and catastrophies) lie? And who are (or will have been) the real heroes of the cinema: Kirk Douglas, John Wayne (and his puppetiers) or...? (Thomas Korschil)