[EFF18S16] Session Sixteen: ★/Johann Lurf
Cite as:
Temple, Michael and Barrington, Matthew
(2023):
[EFF18S16] Session Sixteen: ★/Johann Lurf.
Birkbeck College, University of London.
Description
29 March 2018, 20:30, ICA Cinema
Film: ★, Johann Lurf, Austria, 2017, DCP, 99 minutes, various languages
Soundcloud Link: https://soundcloud.com/user-952189740/essay-film-festival-2018-star-johann-lurf-qa
A graduate of Harun Farocki’s Art and Film Studio, Viennese filmmaker Johann Lurf has built a considerable reputation internationally, thanks to a succession of striking shorts in a structuralist vein that investigate film and space often through found footage moving image. His first feature-length work is a scintillating, monumental development of this tendency, a brilliantly edited compilation of shots of the night sky, lifted from 550 films from the beginning of cinema history right up to the present, and from all around the world, ordered chronologically with original soundtrack (including dialogue) and picture format intact. It is a beautifully simple idea, but expansive and multilayered in the actual viewing, a profoundly involving, immersive, resonant experience. On one level, ★ offers the straightforward pleasure of outright surrender to the onward rush and flow of sounds and visual sensations, with the occasional tingle of recognition; but the cumulative impact of this multitudinous assemblage inevitably prompts more analytical musings on the stars and the universe as imaginative constructs, figured differently according to national context and epoch, and their primal role as locus for our projected fears and fantasies. The film will remain forever unfinished, since Lurf plans to add further clips as new films get made, or older ones resurface; like some ever-expanding archive of our desires, ambitions, wonderment, imagination, the cosmos in ★ is truly infinite.
The screening was followed by a conversation between filmmaker Johann Lurf and critic and curator Olaf Möller.
With support from the Austrian Cultural Forum and Open City Documentary Festival.
Film: ★, Johann Lurf, Austria, 2017, DCP, 99 minutes, various languages
Soundcloud Link: https://soundcloud.com/user-952189740/essay-film-festival-2018-star-johann-lurf-qa
A graduate of Harun Farocki’s Art and Film Studio, Viennese filmmaker Johann Lurf has built a considerable reputation internationally, thanks to a succession of striking shorts in a structuralist vein that investigate film and space often through found footage moving image. His first feature-length work is a scintillating, monumental development of this tendency, a brilliantly edited compilation of shots of the night sky, lifted from 550 films from the beginning of cinema history right up to the present, and from all around the world, ordered chronologically with original soundtrack (including dialogue) and picture format intact. It is a beautifully simple idea, but expansive and multilayered in the actual viewing, a profoundly involving, immersive, resonant experience. On one level, ★ offers the straightforward pleasure of outright surrender to the onward rush and flow of sounds and visual sensations, with the occasional tingle of recognition; but the cumulative impact of this multitudinous assemblage inevitably prompts more analytical musings on the stars and the universe as imaginative constructs, figured differently according to national context and epoch, and their primal role as locus for our projected fears and fantasies. The film will remain forever unfinished, since Lurf plans to add further clips as new films get made, or older ones resurface; like some ever-expanding archive of our desires, ambitions, wonderment, imagination, the cosmos in ★ is truly infinite.
The screening was followed by a conversation between filmmaker Johann Lurf and critic and curator Olaf Möller.
With support from the Austrian Cultural Forum and Open City Documentary Festival.
Previews
1 - EFF18S16 Introduction (EFF18S16 Johann Lurf Star introduction 29-3-2018.MP3)
2 - EFF18S16 Q&A (EFF18S16 Johann Lurf Star Q&A 29-3-2018.MP3)
Collection Method
The Essay Film Festival, active since 2015, presents a global range of contemporary and restored essayistic works. The events are now archived here for research purposes.
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Metadata
| Dataset Title: | [EFF18S16] Session Sixteen: ★/Johann Lurf |
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| Creators: | Temple, Michael and Barrington, Matthew |
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| Dataset Contributors: |
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| Subjects: | |||||||||||||
| Data collection method: | The Essay Film Festival, active since 2015, presents a global range of contemporary and restored essayistic works. The events are now archived here for research purposes. |
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| Collection period: |
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| Statement on legal, ethical, and access issues: | All film stills were provided by participating artists. |
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| Depositing User: | Emma Yapp | ||||||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 01 Sep 2026 10:18 | ||||||||||||
| Last Modified: | 01 Sep 2026 10:18 | ||||||||||||
| Publisher: | Birkbeck College, University of London |
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2916-9876Impact & Reach
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