Trains of Thoughts

The unpretentiousness of this video’s title equals the simplicity of its underlying structure. Nik Thoenen, a graphic artist by trade, constructed an installation consisting of fluorescent tubes mounted in a horizontal row especially for this video, his first. The arrangement of tubes was then “scanned“ with a mounted Super-8 film camera.

Each beat has its own speed, each tempo suggests certain images: Timo Novotny's video for Richard Dorfmeisters Sofa Surfers remix, which was shot in Japan on Super-8 film, begins with an aerial view of a construction site and a crane. As the bass begins softly, the images start to move up along a vertical line, apparently reflecting the path of an elevator. Everything is transparent, everything is structured: The scaffolding is echoed in the pictures frame, which rolls across the screen in a way similar to a poor film projection, offsetting the illusion of movement. Or the images accentuate the music through superimpositions, short zooms and shots through cloudy glass. (Dominik Kamalzadeh)

Timo Novotny labels his new project an experimental music documentary film, in a remix of the celebrated film Megacities (1997), a visually refined essay on the hidden faces of several world "megacities" by leading Austrian documentarist Michael Glawogger. Novotny complements 30 % of material taken straight from the film (and re-edited) with 70 % as yet unseen footage in which he blends original shots unused by Glawogger with his own sequences (shot by Megacities cameraman Wolfgang Thaler) from Tokyo. Alongside the Japanese metropolis, Life in Loops takes us right into the atmosphere of Mexico City, New York, Moscow and Bombay. This electrifying combination of fascinating film images and an equally compelling soundtrack from Sofa Surfers sets us off on a stunning audiovisual adventure across the continents. The film also makes an original contribution to the discussion on new trends in documentary filmmaking.