#49: Reynold Reynolds – the Cast&Crew premiere of ‘The Lost’

Influenced early on by philosophy and science, and working primarily with 16mm as an art medium, Reynold Reynolds has developed a film grammar based on transformation, consumption and decay. Detailed evolving symbols and allusive references create a powerful pictorial language based on Reynolds’ analytical point of view. His depiction of people often makes us aware of the small frames we use to understand reality. By subtly altering the regular conditions of life and watching their effects, he transfers the experimental methods of science to filmmaking, where he frames reality in his laboratory and changes one variable at a time to reveal an underlying causality.

Reynold Reynolds celebrate with the entire cast and crew the premiere of

The Lost, 1933/2013 , 110 min
The Lost is a B&W film (shot on 16mm transferred on HD video) with a plot told through the eyes of a young English writer, Christopher, who comes to Berlin and moves into a cabaret where an eccentric old man adopts young performers, dancers, artists and musicians to live and work in his building. In the basement he witnesses experiments on the edge of life and death which seem more mysterious than scientific. While Christopher settles in, wanders the city and begins to write, the cabaret is under threat from upstanding citizens and authorities, who claim that what goes on in the building is immoral.

The title is a reference to the first intention of a book that Christopher Isherwood started writing after his stay in Berlin from 1929-1933. The Lost was stretched not to only mean ‘The Astray and The Doomed’- referring tragically to the political events in Germany, but also to refer to those individuals whom respectable society shuns in horror.

The Lost is based on material filmed in Berlin in the thirties. Turbulent times during the rise of the Nazi regime put a halt to the production of the film. Reynolds discovered, restored and remade the film between 2011-2013 at locations such as the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Sprengel Museum, Galerie Zink in Berlin and Christopher Grimes Gallery in Los Angeles.

“…you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth! But, please. It’s still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.”  – from ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ by Ken Kesey

see also: https://vimeo.com/77445366

 

Reynold Reynolds (b. 1966 in Central, Alaska) currently lives and works in Berlin. During his undergraduate schooling at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Reynolds studied Physics receiving a Bachelor’s degree under the professorship of Carl Wieman (Physics Nobel Laureate 2001). Changing his focus to studio art he remained two more years in Boulder to study under experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage. After moving to New York City Reynolds completed an M.F.A. at the School of Visual Arts.

Reynold Reynolds is a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He has been awarded both the Rome Prize (2013) and the Berlin prize (2004). His work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and has been shown in numerous biennales including the 4th Berlin Biennale and the 3rd Moscow Biennale. He was the 2014-15 Roman J. Witt Artist in Residence at the Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan. His short film The Drowning Room was awarded an Honorable Mention at the Sundance Film Festival.

Influenced early on by philosophy and science, and working primarily with 16mm as an art medium, he has developed a film grammar based on transformation, consumption and decay. Detailed evolving symbols and allusive references create a powerful pictorial language based on Reynolds’ analytical point of view. His depiction of people often makes us aware of the small frames we use to understand reality. By subtly altering the regular conditions of life and watching their effects, he transfers the experimental methods of science to filmmaking, where he frames reality in his laboratory and changes one variable at a time to reveal an underlying causality.

In 2004 Reynolds was invited to the American Academy in Berlin with a studio at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien for one year. In 2008 he received support from the German Kunstfonds to develop two projects in Berlin. He has received numerous awards for his film work, including the Festival Award for Secret Life at the European Media Art Festival Osnabrueck, 2008, the 2009 Distinction Award for Six Apartments at Transmediale Berlin.

Reynold Reynolds web site: www.artstudioreynolds.com