Manfred Neuwirth's ‘magic hour’ completes a trilogy of interstitial spaces

A butcher's display case, a beach, a kitchen tablecloth, spectacles or a brass band playing in front of a church square. A rainy day, a walk in the snow. The sounds of machines, music, lightning and thunder, scraps of sentences. Recordings and excerpts in which something gradually takes shape, becomes objective, so to speak, or is connected to other images in a subjective extension.

From 54 takes, Manfred Neuwirth has edited his uncommented ‘approaches to formative territories’ in images and sounds. After Tibetan Recollections (1995) and manga train (1998), magic hour is the third part of a ‘trilogy of interstitial spaces’ that has now arrived at memories of one's own past and its places (rediscovered and recorded in Lower Austria).
The title goes back to a description by the cameraman Nestor Almendros and refers to the few minutes between sunset and darkness, when, as Manfred Neuwirth said in an interview with the daily newspaper Der Standard, ‘the light is truly magical because nobody knows where it comes from.’
Neuwirth has prefixed magic hour with a Japanese character that denotes not only a spatial interval but also a period of time. Neither are understood as empty, and in magic hour, too, the many interstices are openings at best. Neuwirth's working method also revolves around condensation: the forty-five minutes of the video film are based on around twenty hours of original material.
According to Neuwirth, her ‘Zwischenblicke’ are created ‘in a kind of collecting process – it is always a kind of “deliberate lack of intention” to get images like these. Of course, they happen with the aim of creating images like these, but you can't force them. They come to you, so to speak, somewhere in front of the camera, or you hear them and then find the image to go with it.’
Time passes at a slightly slower pace in magic hour. The sense of suspension created by the slow motion is further emphasised by the slight asynchrony of images and sound, which fills the (real) space as ‘surround sound’. With this ‘spatial sound’, Neuwirth is also concerned ‘that one does not leave it to this “power cinema”, which bombards you with all the effects, but that there are ways of working with this sound technology that can bring about a different perception. That is, in contrast to emotionalization, which more or less terrorises you, more of an attempt to open spaces where you can bring yourself into it.’
Some of the most beautiful shots in the film are those in which, to a certain extent, nothing moves, ‘but the special slow-motion editing is still inscribed in the material. The quintuple slow motion gives me this graininess, which then becomes noticeable as a slight movement. And once you get used to this pace, once you're in the flow, then, for example, people's movements are perceived almost as normal movements.’
Flickering black and lightning flashes that momentarily illuminate the night. A few branches shimmer through the snow flurry, the explosions of fireworks slowly run down the screen, accompanied by the crackling and chirping of fireworks through the night. A festival tent stage, slowly enveloped in artificial fog from below. A badminton set in a packaging net. What you see in ‘magic hour’ is only seemingly quickly described.

Isabella Reicher, Der Standard