“Tibet Revisited” and “Welt Spiegel Kino” are films that break all forms and genres.

The subject matter, concept and aesthetics of the two films could hardly be more different: “Tibet Revisited”, a minimalist panopticon composed of 28 three-minute views of Lhasa and its surroundings, and “Welt Spiegel Kino”, a technically elaborate work in progress that delves into three found film documents from the 1910s and 1920s to create its own fiction and reflect on the relationship between the reality of the street and that of the cinema. Apart from the producer (Manfred Neuwirth) and the production company (loop media), the films have a lot in common: the precision of their gaze, the precision of their design and the desire with which they break the boundaries of established forms and genres. World cinema from Austria.

“Tibet Revisited” is a loose sequel to Manfred Neuwirth's work “Tibetan Recollections”, created ten years ago. The cultural conflict, as his new film clearly shows, has intensified in the meantime. “Lhasa,” says the filmmaker, “has actually been completely Chinese-ised, the Tibetans are clearly in the minority there.” Nevertheless, the tremendous presence of traditional spiritual life can still be felt in almost every one of the 28 tableaux shot with a static camera. One shows the faithful prostrating themselves in front of the Dalai Lama's former palace; another hypnotic image shows a grinding stone turning uniformly; a third shows a corridor in a monastery that can only be identified as such by the singing of a monk in the background.

Neuwirth relies on a “montage of contemplation”. Those who engage with the film actually learn to see in the cinema. This also marks the essential difference to “Tibetan RecollectionsV. While the earlier film still works with small shifts between sound and image, these (cultural) shifts are already inherent in the virtually unedited images of “Tibet RevisitedV. In the streets of Lhasa, jeans, Coca-Cola and pop music testify to the progress of globalisation; in the countryside, new factory buildings, paved roads and increased traffic are the main indicators. With its final shot, a drive across the country, the film unexpectedly takes a completely new direction. Huge lorries thunder along the road that lies ahead of us in the sparkling light of the highlands, while the local small traders unperturbed continue to chug along the side of the road in their quaint vehicles.

The starting point of “Welt Spiegel Kino” are three street scenes, shot in Vienna, Surabaya and Porto, each showing people in front of a cinema. At the Kinematograph Theater in Vienna, “Die schwarze Kappe” (The Black Cap), a Danish Sherlock Holmes film, is showing, at the Apollokino in Surabaya “Die Nibelungen” (The Nibelungs) by Fritz Lang, and in the Porto cinema a national epic about a Portuguese peasant leader. But more than that, Gustav Deutsch is interested in the people who have gathered on the street. He zooms into the images, singles out individuals from the crowd and turns them into “people of the cinema” by using other contemporary film material to spin their – possible – biographies further: a little boy becomes an iron bender in the Wurstelprater, the owner of the cinematograph is drafted as a soldier in the First World War. one of the cinema-goers from Portugal works in a sardine factory during the week.

“All my work”, says Deutsch, “is connected with chance. Just as you find film history in archives: by chance, incoherently, but somehow connected.” The tremendous appeal of this film lies in the density of the found material and the almost anarchic wit with which Deutsch has edited it. The result is a fascinating reflection on cinema and its dual function as a time and wish machine, in which Siegfried and the dragons of Java, the sardine workers and the Salazar fascists talk to each other, as do the avant-garde and early cinema.

Michael Omasta, film editor at Falter magazine and board member of Synema – Society for Film and Media, Vienna