Pretend you are attending a long collegiate lecture by Peter Kubelka, the Viennese avant-garde filmmaker and world-class raconteur, that covers everything from Film Theory 101 to the transcendental joys of cooking. The presentation is informative, insightful and philosophically all over the map. Now pretend you are watching that same lecture as a film in a theater—one that includes brief clips of Kubelka’s own flickering works and feels as if it were unfolding in real time. That’s what it’s like to experience Martina Kudlácek’s chatumentary on the 79-year-old artist, a whirling tour of one man’s wide-ranging thoughts that requires stamina but leaves you rewarded.
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