zzz: hamburg special
Hans Scheugl
16mm, 35mm, 70mm or CinemaScope, any length, b/w, silent
Ready made film No. 1
Austria 1968
“I conceived zzz: hamburg special for the 1968 Hamburg Film Show. I gave Ernst Schmidt Jr. a spool of thread to take with him to Hamburg. He was supposed to let it run through the projector instead of a film so that the moving shadow of the thread was seen on screen in CinemaScope. This resulted in the first readymade film and at the same time, “the last film in film history,” as I announced: zzz was then and ever since guaranteed its place at the very end of every alphabetical listing of film titles. The duration of the show depended upon the patience of the audience, while the movement of the thread and consequently its shadow on screen was left to the projectionist” (Scheugl 2012: 136).
Hans Scheugl, born 1940 in Vienna, Austria; lives and works in Vienna.
More images
Reference
Hans Scheugl, “Expanded Cinemas Exploding,” in Film Unframed. A History of Austrian Avant-Garde Cinema, ed. Peter Tscherkassky (Vienna: FilmmuseumSynemaPublikationen, 2012), pp. 129–139.
