Jonas Mekas

über Dallas Texas / After the Goldrush

in einem Bericht über das London Filmfestival 1973 (Village Voice New York, Sept 27, 1973)


september 3: Hollis Frampton shows "Hapax Legomena", complete. It is a monumental work, and we well know it, in New York. Klaus Wyborny (Hamburg) shows "Dallas-Texas, After the Goldrush", a fine work in the structural direction. Same sections repeated five times, treated differently. I say "treated", and I'll be using this word a lot in this report. This is one of the things that became visible at this festival, film-makers shooting some footage, of this or that, and then using it as a material. They treat that material very freely, they transform it by various means: they project it and refilm it (like Landow used to do in his early work), and they change it, by lights and filters and different film stocks, and they work on it until the original footage disappears and something else emerges. Anyway - Wyborny's film is one of the most successful of the "treated" films, and it remains in my mind as one of the best films i have seen in London.