Peter Tscherkassky (born October 3, 1958) is an Austrian

avant-garde film Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, parti ...

maker who works primarily with found footage. All of his work is done with film and heavily edited in the darkroom, rather than relying on recent advances in digital film.

Early life

Peter Tscherkassky was born October 3, 1958 in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

. He attended the Primary School in Mistelbach from 1965–1969 and Jesuit boarding school from 1969–1975 in Vienna. He attended BORG (high school) Mistelbach and graduated in June 1977. From 1977–1979 Tscherkassky studied journalism and political science as well as philosophy at the University of Vienna. His first encounter with avant-garde film was in January 1978 when he attended a five-day lecture series by P. Adams Sitney at the Austrian Film Museum.

Film career

Tscherkassky began filming in 1979 when he acquired Super-8 equipment and before the end of the year he had scripted and started off the shooting of ''Kreuzritter''. Throughout his career he conceived numerous film festivals including “The Light of Periphery: Austrian Avant-Garde Film, 1957–1988” (1988), “Im Off der Geschichte” (1990), “Found Footage: Filme aus gefundenem Material” (1991), and “Unknown Territories: The American Independent Film” (1992). He was also the founding member of the newly Austria Filmmakers Cooperative which began in 1982 and resigned from his position there in 1993. His work ''Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine'' (2005) had its world premiere at the

Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...

in the series "Quinzaine des réalisateurs."

Filmography

* ''Bloodletting'' (1981) * ''Erotique'' (1982) * ''Love Film'' (1982) * ''Freeze Frame'' (1983) * ''Holiday Movie'' (1983) * ''Miniaturen: Many Berlin Artists in Hoisdorf'' (1983) * ''Motion Piction'' (1984) * ''Manufracture'' (1985) * ''Kelimba'' (1986) * ''Shot Countershot'' (1987) * ''Tabula Rasa'' (1987/89) * ''Parallel Space: Inter-View'' (1992) * ''Happy-End'' (1996) * ''L'Arrivée'' (1997/98; using footage from ''

L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat ''L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat'' (translated from French into English as ''The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station'', ''Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat'' (US) and ''The Arrival of the Mail Train'', and in the United Kingdom as ' ...

'' (1896) by the Lumiere Brothers and ''

Mayerling Mayerling is a small village (pop. 200) in Lower Austria belonging to the municipality of Alland in the district of Baden. It is situated on the Schwechat river, in the Wienerwald (''Vienna woods''), southwest of Vienna. From 1550, it was in t ...

'' (1968) by

Terence Young Terence or Terry Young may refer to: *Terence Young (director) (1915–1994), British film director * Terence Young (politician) (born 1952), Canadian Conservative Party politician * Terence Young (writer), Canadian writer * Terry Young (American p ...

) * ''Outer Space'' (1999; using footage from ''

The Entity ''The Entity'' is a 1982 American supernatural horror film directed by Sidney J. Furie, and written by Frank De Felitta, who adapted his 1978 novel of the same name. The film stars Barbara Hershey as a single mother in Los Angeles who is rape ...

'' (1982) by Sidney J. Furie) * ''Get Ready'' (1999) * ''Dream Work'' (2001; using the same film as ''Outer Space'') * ''Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine'' (2005; using footage from ''

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly ''The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'' ( it, Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, literally "The good, the ugly, the bad") is a 1966 Italian epic spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood as "the Good", Lee Van Clee ...

'' (1967) by Sergio Leone)CLOSE-UP, Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine
/ref> * ''Nachtstück (Nocturne)'' (2006) * ''Coming Attractions'' (2010) * ''The Exquisite Corpus'' (2015) * ''Train Again'' (2021)

References

Articles about Tscherkassky on Senses of Cinema
* Alexander Horwath, Michael Loebenstein (Ed.): ''Peter Tscherkassky'', FilmmuseumSynemaPublikationen Vol. 2, Vienna 2005,
Dossier on Peter Tscherkassky by Matt Levine, Jonathan Rosenbaum and Virgil Widrich (César Ustarroz, ed.), in ''Found Footage Magazine'', issue#4, 2018. ISSN 2462-2885

External links

Peter Tscherkassky Official Site
*
''Outer Space'' (1999) on VimeoYouTubeand MUBI

Notes