Peter Tscherkassky / Austria / 2021 / 20’ / Silent

The acceleration of the world and perception radically intensifies over the course of the 19th century. While the mobilization of the gaze generates unforeseen freedom, it also fuels anxiety. From the very start, cinema and trains are linked as factories of newfound upheaval and uprootedness. Peter Tscherkassky’s roller coaster ride through a constellated frame-by-frame landscape of escalating cinema commences with frenetic action and the passing of a baton: Horse-drawn coaches and steeds compete one last time against the iron horse, the riders intercut with the train at dizzying velocity. Train Again Train Again is a phantom ride through the engine room of the seventh art, a ceremony of the mechanics of railway vehicles and image transporters. It is woven out of twitching film frames, flashing light, and spectacularly collapsing motifs – a concrete abstract cinema of meta-attractions and frenzy. Train Again is an ecstatic ode to the fragility and explosive force of the medium.

Music Dirk Schaeder
Producer Peter Tscherkassky

Peter Tscherkassky

Born in 1958 in Vienna. He started directing in 1979. He published essay on Avant-gard cinema and in 1991 he was one of the founder of Sixpackfilm.
Tscherkassky’s movies were award-winners such as the Golden Gate Award (San Francisco), Main Prize at Oberhausen, Best Short at the Venice Film Festival (2005). In the same year, at Cannes “Quinzaine des réalisateurs” there was presented, like International Preview, Instructions for A Light And Sound Machine.