This silent 16mm film by Marcel Broodthaers based upon the French book with the same title holds a nostalgic and poetic, but still pedagogic document to the history of seamanship. Dividing and at the same pairing the past and the modern, painting and photo but also shipping and the sea as the main commercial route in the ninetheenth century versus the modern sailing as a leisure activity in the twentieth century. The paging of the images shows a linear shape to the film, but the narrative itself is more or less a non-linear narrative and structualist way of filmmaking that undermines the narrative function: The story that doesn't really tell a story. The form can resemble a slide show and is thus also challenging the media of film by using still images - a display of the pages in a book as the holding visual element.
Un Voyage en Mer du Nord, 1973-74
This silent 16mm film by Marcel Broodthaers based upon the French book with the same title holds a nostalgic and poetic, but still pedagogic document to the history of seamanship. Dividing and at the same pairing the past and the modern, painting and photo but also shipping and the sea as the main commercial route in the ninetheenth century versus the modern sailing as a leisure activity in the twentieth century. The paging of the images shows a linear shape to the film, but the narrative itself is more or less a non-linear narrative and structualist way of filmmaking that undermines the narrative function: The story that doesn't really tell a story. The form can resemble a slide show and is thus also challenging the media of film by using still images - a display of the pages in a book as the holding visual element.