1895 (1995)

Fat Chicks and Imbeciles: the films of Priit Pärn

In 1895, Pärn used the centenary of cinema as an opportunity to deconstruct it. (The film opens with the statement “The cinema, it is a lie.”) The structure of the film is straightforward: The protagonist, Jean-Paul, does not know who he is and decides to travel around the world in search of his identity. (It turns out he’s the co-creator of cinema, Louis Lumière.) Pärn uses Jean-Paul’s journey to analyze the cinema and its influence on our perceptions of the world. He argues that our ideas of nationality and history are constructed by cinema. (For example, footage from Sergei Eisenstein’s fictional film October was often used as documentary footage of the Russian Revolution.) During Jean-Paul’s travels, each country is reduced to a stereotype – Italy is red wine and the Mafia; Switzerland is clocks and Swiss Army knives. Cinema, Pärn seems to argue, has become so ingrained in our lives that we often allow it to replace our own perspective of the past. In a sense, “1895” is an anti-cinema film. It reminds us that there was a time when motion pictures did not exist and suggests that perhaps a movieless world was not such a bad thing. In a world without films, cinema aficionados might have done something more beneficial for humanity. (At one point we learn that François Truffaut was working on the invention of synthetic rain clouds before giving it all up to become a film critic and director.) As with all of Pärn’s work, there is an autobiographical element to the films. In 1895 he acknowledges his own complicity in propagating the evils of cinema through the character of Louis’ brother Auguste Lumière, who disappears at
the beginning of the film to become a biologist (like Pärn) before returning at the end to invent cinema with Louis/Jean-Paul. Pärn reverses cinema’s role as an instigator of a generic memory and instead uses it to explore his personal memories of both his life and his films.
Robinson, C. (2005). Fat Chicks and Imbeciles: the films of Priit Pärn. Metro Cinema Publications Number Two, March, lk 7.

Pärn’s playful manipulations of collective experience and historical mocuments are foregrounded by George Browne’s quote that ‘Cinema is a Lie’. 1895 concludes as Eesti Joonisfilm ‘warns you: all names and persons in this film are fictitious’. As addicted devotees of cinema, what immediacy beyond celluloid remains to reliably penetrate our souls and minds?
The screams of gulls...salty water...Roquefort cheese...a moment to simply exist.
Leslea Kroll
Kroll, L. (2005). 1895. Metro Cinema Publications Number Two, March, lk 19.

The humour is brillaint, completely absurd and very very funny, and there is an amazing synchronisation between image and narrative that means that they complement each other continously, and feed off each other where the comedy is concerned. The very English-sounding voice over works really well, leading me to wonder (wrongly) whether the whole thing was written in English, as the jokes themselves also seem to have a certain englishness about them, quite Monty Python-esque, but also hints of very modern English humour such as Chris Morris (one of Priits other films 'Hotel E' is concerned with characturistic representations of the East and the West, and it seems questions about the media in general are continually just below the surface in many of his films). Also parallels with comedians such as Phil Kay and Dylan Moran seem apparant.
art review: 1895 by Priit Parn Janno Poldma, http://www.sallyartreview.blogspot.com/2006/04/1895-by-priit-parn-janno-poldma.html (6.06.2014).

"1895" follows the life of one Jean-Paul through a late 19th-century landscape filled with anachronisms and film references, and held together by a long rhapsodic monologue, written by Parn. At one point, Jean-Paul arrives in Sweden in the early 1870s, wonders whether Alfred Nobel is inventing dynamite and thinks he sees an image by Ingmar Bergman, all while ABBA plays in the background.
"When you're from a small country, everyone always stereotypes everything about you. I wanted to turn it around and stereotype all the big countries, like France, Sweden and Germany."
But there is much more to "1895" than petty nationalist jokes. The film, his epic, is Parn's half-insane love letter to cinema. You can imagine it as a conglomerate of all the images that hit him as a child going to the movies, filtered through an unsentimental comical lens shaped by his own country's unsteady years.
Morton, P. (2006). Priit Parn, Estonia's animator - general. The Baltic Times, 26. apr.
TBT Priit Parn, Estonia's animator - general, http://www.baltictimes.com/news/articles/15209/#.U5IDQHbLG9Y (06.06.2014).

"CINEMA - THIS IS A LIE”
            George Brownes
MEMORY
The birth of a genius.  Lyon.  Nov. 26, 1863.
The brother.
1869, the island of Tonga.
1871. Stockholm.
Paris. 1876.
1878.
1879, Switzerland. The beginning of the crisis.
At the same time...
A meeting in Germany.
1878. Clermont-Fenand, St Godand Hospital, the building.
1884. Tuscany.
Passion in Copenhagen.
1878, a cold winter in Southern France.
Spring 68, Paris.  Time to choose.
1871. F. Liszt meets a piano.
1871. Marseille, Grand Cafe.  Discreet charm of proletariat.
Time for contemplation.  April 25, 1873 - March 13, 1874.
HE   AND   SHE
12.37  a bathroom.  The iron breath of technology.
1882.  The collapse of dreams.  The twilight zone.
The assassination of Antonio the Cheese-maker in Naples in 1883.
March - April 1883.  Waterman returns.
1873, Tour de France.
At the same time...
1875.  Berlin.  The culmination of the identity crisis.
Prague. 1874.
Frame by frame, Montpellier, on Wednesday.
A meeting with a cigar, a sardine and Japanese memories.
A successful experiment in France.
1884, Salamanca de la Guadalajara, Rioja.
Freedom.
Edouard and Alfred.
1880-1882.  Under the bridge.
Edison on the bridge, 1882.
Edouard in action.
1885. Friends.
Edouard in action.
Avignon girls.  Avignon, April 15, 1891.
An unseen catastrophe.
Edouard.
May 1895. Velko Tõrnovo.  The circle closes.
1891-1893.  Back to basics.
1895.  Setting out.
At the same time...
1895.  17.30 the brothers jump into the air.

Eesti Joonisfilm.