Palmes d'or

This film by Siegfried A. Fruhauf consists of 800 photographs taken during the Cannes Film Festival: photographs laid over one another, chopped up and processed until almost none of the original content is recognizable. In a rapid succession of images that is impossible for the eye to follow, we see only a fraction of the carefully constructed images of the stars in the photographs, reduced as they are to nebulous silhouettes and gray smudges. It is almost as if they are all being shown simultaneously. This is the very essence of the festival: a barrage of images. The soundtrack is the perfect accompaniment, propelling the fierce torrent of abstract black-and-white images with an array of sounds vying with one another for dominance. Each frame contains more photographs and sounds than our minds can grasp, intentionally creating an oversupply of information for our eyes and ears. The final image of a flickering fire brings the deluge, and this short film, to an end. Fruhauf employed a similar technique (influenced by the Austrian avant-garde filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky) of combining archive images and stroboscopic effects in earlier works, such as for the lightning effects in his most recent film Night Sweat (2008). Another of Fruhauf's films, Mirror Mechanics, was screened at the Critics' Week of the Cannes Film Festival.