Space, the final frontier. The infinite expanses of outer space have attracted the gaze of the human being since the beginning of time. We have seen the moon as a woman, or as the face of a man. Some have believed that one star led the way to the crib of the redeemer, others that there is an amniotic sac somewhere out there containing an enormous Star Child. Some see the actions of cosmic forces in the constellations, some expect little green men to arrive from the red planet. Spaceships, accompanied by the tunes of waltzes, make their way through this all-encompassing object of longing, where nobody can hear you scream; in response, the universe exclaims all the more loudly that it is infinite, that we are finite, and that everything between us is nothingness.
These are just a few of the associations that the experimental filmmaker Johann Lurf – who was born in 1982 in Vienna and trained at the city’s academy of fine arts – explores in his found footage film . He has done so by compiling the film images that we human beings have created of the starry sky, from silent film set pieces to modern-day special effects. Sometimes we progress at breakneck speed-of-light, sometimes we float gently and weightlessly through space in this virtuoso, enlightening and funny journey through the imagination, which brings together the light of the world and the light of the screen.
