Motion Picture
Director Jorgen Leth
Countries Denmark
Duration 20 min
Synopsis
Motion Picture is an experimental film with and not about the Danish tennis player Torben Ulrich, who is merely credited as “Example”. The film may be viewed as a study of the nature of the medium and more specifically of the phenomena of framing, movement, and syn- chronicity of sound and picture. The material consists of Ulrich training strokes against a wall, volleys at the net and serves, but also of strange enactments in which Ulrich runs towards the camera, arms and legs twitching, dances a crazy racket dance or fakes slow motion as he sits down at a table and pours a cup of tea. These are all studies of movement. At the same time, the framing is absolute: Ulrich moves in and out of the picture without any attempt by the camera to follow him, thus constantly emphasising the role of framing. The complex nature of film is indicated by Jørgen Leth’s short appearances as a living clapper- board for synchronizing sound and image. Jørgen Leth and Ole John ran the film through the camera several times to create a couple of doubly- exposed scenes, and the result is the mysterious perception of several of Torben Ulrichs’ servings on top of one another almost as if in a choreo- graphed dance. One last narrative element introduced several places in the film is very sparse subtitles, such as “table chair tea”. At the pre- miere at the Carlton cinema Motion Picture was shown prior to François Truffaut’s L’enfant Sauvage.
Motion Picture is an experimental film with and not about the Danish tennis player Torben Ulrich, who is merely credited as “Example”. The film may be viewed as a study of the nature of the medium and more specifically of the phenomena of framing, movement, and syn- chronicity of sound and picture. The material consists of Ulrich training strokes against a wall, volleys at the net and serves, but also of strange enactments in which Ulrich runs towards the camera, arms and legs twitching, dances a crazy racket dance or fakes slow motion as he sits down at a table and pours a cup of tea. These are all studies of movement. At the same time, the framing is absolute: Ulrich moves in and out of the picture without any attempt by the camera to follow him, thus constantly emphasising the role of framing. The complex nature of film is indicated by Jørgen Leth’s short appearances as a living clapper- board for synchronizing sound and image. Jørgen Leth and Ole John ran the film through the camera several times to create a couple of doubly- exposed scenes, and the result is the mysterious perception of several of Torben Ulrichs’ servings on top of one another almost as if in a choreo- graphed dance. One last narrative element introduced several places in the film is very sparse subtitles, such as “table chair tea”. At the pre- miere at the Carlton cinema Motion Picture was shown prior to François Truffaut’s L’enfant Sauvage.