Copy Shop (2001)

User Rating:

7.6/10   

Director:

Virgil Widrich

Writer:

Virgil Widrich (writer)

Genre:

Drama | Short | Comedy

Plot:

Wordless story about a man who awakes in his bed wearing his clothes (including a check vest). He rises...

Plot Keywords:

Photocopy | Surrealism | Time Loop | Repeated Event | Human Duplication

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 28 wins & 3 nominations

Cast

Johannes Silberschneider	...	Alfred Kager
Elisabeth Ebner-Haid	...	Flower girl

Runtime:

12 min

Country:

Austria

Language:

None

Color:

Black and White

Certification:

Argentina:Unrated | Germany:o.Al.

Company:

Virgil Widrich Filmproduktion

Trivia:

The movie was shoot with a digital video camera. After filming, all images had been manipulated in the computer, printed with a regular laser printer (about 18,000 single pages) and then filmed with a 35mm film camera.

Layers

Interesting films are copies of life (or something related to life) that enclose and acknowledge themselves.

I call this "folding," where the film does something and them does something with itself, usually the same "something." That's the idea in many, many films. It is a hot topic in some films schools and many script labs.

And that's what this veteran of film intellectual circles addresses (even though he is from a historically daft area cinematic ally).

Nominally, this is about a man who copies his own reality and encounters the copies. What makes it interesting viewing is how the "copying" is woven into the actual making of the film: what we see was "filmed," then each frame made into a photocopy (with many artifacts of paper) and then filmed. So we get two layers of paper and two layers of film interwoven. Only the paper artifacts are acknowledged.

Very clever. It is only an essay compared to a real folded film like "Moulin Rouge," but a fun film school exercise in real folding.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.