What the Night Speaks – a Story

Documentary and pseudo-documentary procedures were filmed simultaneously by two cameras from different viewpoints. The material was then divided into phases of movement. In the montage each phase was doubled. The techniques used in this process vary. Also the sound was doubled, again using different techniques. Two realities, differently perceived according to the conditions of this film, were edited into one synthetic reality, where everything is repeated. This doubling up destroys the postulate: identity of copy and image.

A car drives through Schumann street from its beginning to its end. The drive was filmed in one take, end and beginning of the film being identical with the end and the beginning of the street. The length of the street and the length of the film strip become identical by an apparent equation: space becomes time, space distance becomes time distance/duration.

The entrance to a men's toilet in an underground pedestrian passage in Vienna. Church bells are heard in the distance. In a merciless editing rhythm, anonymous men are brought ever closer to the opaque glass door, in rhythmic stanzas they are stucked ever deeper inside the room one can't see into. In between there are photos from a pornographic magazine, in which a tattooed Saviour is placed in a direct connection with the sexual intercourse between two men - all to the sounds of ghastly brass band music. Prince of Peace is written under the Redeemer's face.

This is the theme of the film: The secret of objects in the huge space and time curve: the not-being-able-to-recognize, the not-being-able-to-grasp, the not-knowing. The curve is presented in the film as a miniature: 24 hours (morning, day, evening, night, morning) condensed into 40 minutes.

Scheugl elevates the trivial, the snapped up and coincidental to unmixed small films. In Safety Film he dismembers an epic Hollywood western by withdrawing the color, story rejection and lack of sound into some of its parts.

With his film, Sugar Daddies, Scheugl leaves the cinema and projects the film in a place similar to the location of the filming: the film material consists of drawings on the bathroom walls at the University of Vienna.

A continuous shot from a vehicle's dashboard offering fascinating glimpse of a Calcutta street and the larger picture of daily life in the city.

A film about speech.

Documentary by Hans Scheugl on Kurt Kren.

Hans Scheugl could have started a new life with his friend John in the USA 50 years ago - but he didn't. He imagines a life that never happened. The letter A, blurred against a pink background. This is the first letter on a journey that does not go alphabetically to Z, even though many letters appear - not just alphabetical, but written correspondence.

Hans Scheugl’s hamburg special consists of a spool of thread that runs through the projector instead of a film. On the bright empty screen appears a vertical line that is moved to both sides by the projectionist.