REALTIME2002

"All that film is can be reduced to two elements: light and (proportionately structured) movement. And there are many possible answers to the question of what light and proportionate movement are. In Realtime, Siegfried Fruhauf has decided on the most simple one, summing it up in the most symbolically unequivocal and, literally, most illuminating way: the sun. The light of the sun is the only type of lighting used to illuminate the movie screen in Realtime. And the sunrise, filmed in realtime, is the only discernible motion - which makes us realize that all motion, in film and in the cosmos, is temporal. Everything else about film is negotiable, such as the fuzzy area between (justified) expectation and (actual) fulfillment, which is known as suspense. After the moving electric arc on the screen has been revealed to be a heavenly body, we have every reason to believe that it will continue its forward motion in an absolutely constant orbit. At the same time, we eagerly ask at which point (and/or through which points) the filmmaker will remove his gaze from it. Or the soundtrack, which also represents an arbitrary matter, and which is called music in the most arbitrary of cases. The irreversible movement of Fruhauf's protagonist is accompanied by the groove of a playfully altered pop song - the absolute meter is subordinated to a moment of subjective duration. Realtime returns the possibilities available to film to their absolute zero - and provides a clever hint at what can be reimagined proceeding from this point (and on to eternity)." -Robert Buchschwenter (Translation: Steve Wilder)

"I shot REALTIME on a Sony Hi8 Videocamcorder. This Camera creates a nice structure in the picture, when you have extreme light situations. I filmed the sun with a black welding glass in front of the lens to create the effect with the black sky and the green, yellow sun. I was fascinated to get the real essence of cinema with a camera that was made for home users, to make private videos and watch them on a TV monitor. All that cinema is, is in this simple but powerful film - light and time. The sun gives us these two parameters within the change of day and night. And in the film, it is not the movement of the sun that you can see - it is the rotation of the earth that becomes visible. I used the earth as a trolley to create a phantom ride through the universe. And to bring the essence of the biggest cinema, the universe, back to the screen, it was necessary to make a transfer on film. I decided to use 35mm because it is the genuine cinema format." -S.F.