Guy Lochhead, 08/10/10
Widrich is an Austrian director of short films and multimedia visual art. He was a precocious child who finished three live action films and one animation within his first year of owning a camera (1980). After finishing his last childhood film in 1985 – an epic, feature-length film concerning action, horror and sci-fi in the past, present and future – he spent a while working as a film distributer and photographer’s assistant in Hollywood. He had been interested in the possibilities of new animation techniques and special effects from a young age, and developed on this when resuming his directorial career in the late ‘1990s with the extraordinary, experimental, time-distorting ‘TX-Transform’. Since then, he has continued to experiment with new animation, time and cinematic convention, creating commercial films, commissions and self-guided work. Widrich is an exciting, inventive film-maker who’s clearly in love with film. He’s good at what he does. I like that. I also like the fact that he got into it at such a young age, using the gift of a Super-8 camera to give a visual presence to his imagination. However, he currently seems to just be experimenting. A lot of his stuff is very impressive but I don’t feel he’s yet made anything mind-blowing enough to be included here. Also, I once e-mailed him to ask if there was any way to see or talk about his childhood films, and he said that he didn’t like to talk about them anymore. I always find that sort of approach to childhood weird. It’s a shame, and seems a bit confused given the amount of detail given about those films on his website. Those films sound among the most intriguing work he’s made. TX-Transform is also fascinating. I’ll look into that individually too.