The central leitmotif investigated by Siegfried A. Fruhauf in his artistic works concerns the nature of film, its very essence. In Dissolution Prologue (Extended Version), this guiding principle leads to associated questions in terms of the medium's limitations and, as the title suggests, their dissolution: metaphorically, this concerns the idea of the curtain as emblematic of the cinematic and its veil of illusion that never conclusively closes but rather relentlessly opens. The visual composition signals "The show must go on," its conceptual linchpin once again pivoting on the idea of absolute film within the Fruhaufian reference system of film history and cognitive theory. The "veil" of the prologue concretely conveys the introduction of analog film footage as it powerfully pulls us into a contrastive interplay of horizontal and vertical lines expanding and approaching one another in sonorous accord with a pure sinus tone variation. The film frame is continually filled by surfaces resulting from emerging and retreating lines. A kind of blink, what is shown continually disappears only to reveal the next visual layer which is again wiped away. A blue gray analog texture flickers, grain and scratches lend an optical rhythm and impression of depth atop which minimizing lines converge in a cross. The frame expands toward the middle of the film – reminiscent of Morgan Fisher's Screening Room – to include two pulsing strips of pure digital light flanking the left and right sides of the frame. With Kazimir Malevich's Black Square (1915) in view and Blaise Pascal’s 1647 vacuum test arrangement in mind, Fruhauf probes experimental film in the pure form of an experiment and transforms it into visual music. (Katharina Müller)
Translation: Eve Heller

What instigates Siegfried A. Fruhauf’s research is the nature of cinema, or of film, since we may be in the presence of objects that go through processes related to film, that is, those which are closest to its essence. The metalanguage he works with is, therefore, that which comes from analog film, specifically the one based on everything that precedes the image itself: the light and its absolute contrast, the total darkness, or, even, the old guiding marks printed on film for laboratory or projection work. However, what we see is a digital screening. In “Dissolution Prologue (Extended Version)”, Fruhauf explores the limits of the media itself, with an absolute minimalism of resources, such as the limits of perception, in a proposition that can only enrapture the viewer, if not in the most sensitive or intellectual way, in the most direct way, taking them to the extreme of their senses’ capacity. This experience is not unrelated to the use of particularly penetrating frequencies of continuous sounds, usually created to punctuate the beginning of something, the prologue. The filmmaker has already been to Curtas many times, with films in competition and an exhibit at Solar – Cinematic Art Gallery. (MM - Curtas Vila do Conde)

The central leitmotif investigated by the director in his artistic works concerns the nature of film. This guiding principle leads to associated questions in terms of the medium's limitations and, as the title suggests, their dissolution. (Annecy Festival)