Austria 2026
A film by Karl Wratschko
Duration: 2 minutes 22 seconds
Shooting format: 16mm
Screening format: 16mm & DCP, b/w, silent

This experimental short film draws on a sequence from one of the most iconic films in cinematic history, Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. A vintage 16mm film print of this classic was projected onto a white wall exactly one hundred years after the film’s premiere – with the film projector set to the maximum possible blurriness – and this image was in turn filmed with a 16mm camera set to sharp focus. With this experimental setup, canon|eering asks, on the one hand, to what extent the innovative power and original significance of canonised films can still be read or experienced by a contemporary audience? On the other hand, the film fundamentally questions the film-historical canon, its composition and its current relevance: To what extent must the existing canon of film classics be questioned, broken down and expanded? Last but not least, canon|eering raises questions about the location where the film sequence was shot. Odessa, the city where Eisenstein filmed this footage, has been in its fourth year of war since 2026.