Accelerando
Georg Wasner
2016 - 40 min - Video Full HD - Couleur et Noir & Blanc - Autriche

A cinematic essay about the analytical power of utopias as depicted in early documentary films and political pamphlets, centring on excerpts of "Fabrik Poldihütte", a fragment of an early Austrian sponsored film about Karl Wittgenstein’s steel factory (originally titled "Das Stahlwerk der Poldihütte während des Weltkriegs" ["Poldihütte steel works during the Great War"], 1916), the British documentary and propaganda film "The Battle of the Somme" (1916, Geoffrey Malins & John McDowell), the "reactionary modernist" Nazi propaganda film "Metall des Himmels" (1935, Walter Ruttmann), and the text "Europe’s Optical Illusion" (1909) – British pacifist Norman Angell’s pamphlet about the "Great Illusion" that war and military action can help maintain the status of countries in the "economically civilized" world.