In the Beginning was the Eye

A Film by Bady Minck : Unclassifiable.
No other adjective fits this little and delicious essay on Alpine landscapes and tourists that rest thereabout from the year‘s commotion. Bady Minck works with disposable material — old pictures and postcards — and builds with it a monument to touristic kitsch, using all digital technology available as if it were a rejuvenating system for memories. The result is hypnotic and absurdly beautiful, at the same time as it reveals to us that towns and cities also have a soul. (Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente 04/04) This film takes us on a time-travel using images of an iconic mountain found on postcards. The historic imprint of political realities and human fates are rendered visible onto the idealized landscapes. The post cards where written by travellers who witnessed the same place at different times. (Fly Stories /Chiang-Mai, Thailand 2005)

In the Beginning was the Eye is in an Interdisciplinary Analysis. Manufactured in a melting pot between science and art, Bady Minck’s award-winning film

In the Beginning was the Eye  continues its passionate journey in the shape of a book.

The sustainability researcher Heidi Dumreicher and the film author Olaf Möller have gathered fifteen writers who reframe and reiterate the questions posed by the film. What is landscape? A Garden of Eden, a data base, a cinematic backdrop? How does film respond to landscape, science to film, and landscape to science? What is the role of time, velocity, animation, philosophy, and fine arts in this process?

In the Beginning was the Eye  is with its 45 minutes of abundant avant-garde research, the figurehead of the Director’s Fortnight in Cannes 2003.  At times a dreamlike vision, at times political, philosophical and even culinary, the film is technically perfect. The stunning sound and visuals and the hypnotic editing ensure you not to get bored for a second. (Martin Granica, Repérages, Paris)

Like the film, the book traverses the boundaries between ecology, science, art, and film, in the process reconnecting numerous facets which were articulated cinematographically by the film and discussed at the
cinESCAPE symposium.

Film, symposium, and book are the result of a long lasting and fruitful cooperation between Amour Fou Film production Vienna, Minotaurus Film Luxembourg and the research institute Oikodrom. Interdisciplinary analyses, comments and essays as well as collages by the filmmaker give insight into the development, history, are the background of In the Beginning was the Eye.
Interdisciplinary analysis, comments and essays as well as collages by the filmmaker give insight into the development, history, and background of  In the Beginning was the Eye .

In terms of the interaction of science and art, the contributors of the book include scientists, film critics, filmmakers and poets.