Werner Nekes

DER TAG DES MALERS

Germany, 1998, 84′

THE DAY OF THE PAINTER
The painter gazes at his female model, or how voyeurism is transformed into culture. An erotic adventure film where the theme is the viewer himself.
The Day of the Painter shows what “La Belle Noiseuse” does not want to show: the enclosed “Unknown Masterpiece”. It is a walk through the picture world of the painter that directs the gaze to the unveiled female model. Associations with the picture world of Dürer, Marey, Matisse, Seurat, to the “Origin of the World” by Courbet, to “L’ étant donnés” by Duchamp and to many other works of art can be called up and are actually intended. The Day of the Painter amalgamates the artistic expressive possibilities of painting, video and computer images as film. Unusual ways of showing make the film an adventure film for the viewer’s gaze. The art of painting melts into the film.

Werner Nekes
With his death on January 22, 2017, the world of experimental cinema loses one of its great figures whose films have been shown in numerous international festivals and museums.
A tireless activist, Werner Nekes has been involved in a number of activities throughout his career: the production of a considerable number of films, the creation of the Hamburg Film Cooperative, the Filmbüro NW, the International Center for New Cinema, teaching in different universities and art schools, and the creation of one of the world’s largest collections of objects related to pre-cinema and optical phenomena.
Nekes was particularly active as an experimental filmmaker during the late 60s and 70s. His films screened world-wide and were honored with a multitude of prizes and awards. At the same time he became more and more entangled in a growing passion of collecting pre-cinema optical devices ultimately ending up as a preeminent collector who frequently used these devices in his later essay-style films.