walking from sals to tims | 2010 | Vidster | 2:50
Synopsis
A contemporary re-imagining of Oskar Fischinger’s Munchen-Berlin Wanderung (1927).
Artist Statement
Walking from Sals to Tims is such a sizeable challenge that anyone who undertakes it must have a very good reason. I was motivated mostly by a longing for decent coffee. I wanted to become healthy after eating an unhealthy but fabulous tasting meal. I succeeded in walking over 100 blocks to Tims, taking the back roads, all on foot, with no Segways or bicycles used. Hourly, I put stretches of pot-holes behind me. I saw many beautiful landscapes, met friendly people, socialist workers, and here and there the occasional milksop whiner. I got along well with all of them, and had good conversations. I must say that people in this city are generally pretty strange.
Oscar Fischinger once wrote:
Walking from Munich to Berlin is such a sizeable challenge that anyone who undertakes it must have a very good reason. I was motivated mostly by a longing for freedom. I wanted to break ties that bound me, and I wanted to become healthy from this long hike at the same time that I broke all the ties binding me to Munich. I succeeded in walking over 1,000km. [620 miles] to Berlin, taking the back roads, all on foot, with no trains or conveyances used. Daily I put long stretches of road behind me. I saw many beautiful landscapes, met friendly people, farmers and workers, and here and there Gypsies. I got along well with all of them, and we had good conversations. There is a lot less difference between people than is commonly supposed. I must say that people are the same everywhere. There are some differences, of course, but these stem primarily from character and temperament, and those same variations occur everywhere.For an airplane, this is a laughable stretch, only about two and a half hours from Munich to Berlin. But it took me three and a half weeks, wandering as I did through hop-fields, over mountains, across the Danube, through forests and little villages, and again over mountains, from the heights of which everything looks so terribly tiny.
Oskar Fischinger, manuscript, n.d.
Critical Discourse
“My favourite Canadian film of all time!” – Guy Maddin (2010).
“Here’s a movie that is practically its own genre, the ‘compressed walking film.’ The title says it all: Walking: From Munich to Berlin; by Oskar Fischinger.
Fischinger takes his camera on a stroll from Munich to Berlin in 1927, and along the way squeezes off extremely brief records of his journey, all edited in camera and strung along on a single roll of film, so that the ground covered and memories collected may fly past all the faster when reviewed after that film is processed. If you’re reading this, I’d like to issue a challenge: make your own walking film. Just pick your own Points A and B and cover the distance with your eye! I know in these digital days editing in camera is not so easy, but see what you can do.
The erstwhile Winnipeg-based filmmaker Clint Enns once made his own while ambulating from Winnipeg’s 24-hour breakfast joint Salisbury House to a Tim Hortons, with lots of the ‘Peg in between.” – Guy Maddin, “A Wild Walk,” The Review 9 (November 22, 2015).
Screenings/Exhibitions
April 23, 2014. Radiações Consumistas, Apordoc: Rossio Series, Lisboa, Portugal. Curated by Julia Gouin, Filipe Afonso and Victor Gresard and presented by Collectif Jeune Cinéma.
December 9, 2011. 13th Festival des Cinèmas Diffèrents de Paris, Paris, France.
November 12, 2011. Colour out of Space, Sallis Benney Theatre, Brighton, UK.