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In a festival whose dedication to celluloid is readily apparent, why not declare it directly? And so one of the Vienna International Film Festival's Special Programs this year is a bastion of that most wonderful format, 16mm film. Programmed by Katja Wiederspahn and Haden Guest with an admirably variegated range, the programs were gathered around collective films, war films, sex films, expanded cinema, and more. Key to the section's expanse, which begins in the 1920s and touches every decade between here and there, is also in highlighting new work done in this increasingly outmoded, "out of date," and unprojectionable format. Included amongst these are films every bit as exciting as the history and canon "Revolution in 16mm" touches on: Jodie Mack's Razzle Dazzle (written about here), Richard Touhy's masterpiece of color Ginza Strip, and, most excitingly, a quartet of new films by Nathaniel Dorsky, the film poet who makes...

Landscape becomes digital in Richard Kerr‘s minimalist and hypnotic experimental film pictures of sound. Although the camera was set to record the islands just off of Vancouver, the actual image is so washed out and indistinct, land, water and air are reduced to basic color gradations. Every once in awhile, a boat enters the picture with its arrival punctuated by unnatural digital blurt, accentuating the man-made object’s intrusion into the natural order of things. Except, the image has become so degraded, nothing seems natural any more.

Kerr was one of the early members of the Escarpment School film movement in Canada in the late ’70s and ’80s that was centered around activity at Sheridan College. The Escarpment School was a loosely defined group of filmmakers joined by a similarity in themes based around an exploration of landscape and its effect on the personal. A few of Kerr’s own films,...