Events

Berlin based Volker Gerling always knew he wanted to tell stories, he just did not know which stories to tell. When he attended film school he discovered the art of the flipbook – a series of pictures that vary from one page to the next, so that when the pages are turned rapidly the pictures appear to move.

”For me this is a fascinating way to tell stories.”

In Portraits in Motion, Gerling moves through the flipbooks with his thumb underneath a video camera and projects the images onto the movie screen. In a series of enchanting and precious moments the people he photographed come to life on screen. His works are rapidly taken shots of people, arranged in order so they move as they’re flipped through.

Volker describes how he developed his distinctive style of work. “In my flipbook films I mainly work with documentary portraits of people. The 36 images that my films are made of would run by in about one and a half seconds of ordinary cinema or television, but in a flipbook movie they can be repeated at will, you can see the gaps between them, and you can unconsciously try to fill these gaps. In this form, these pictures gain their own very unusual power and poetry.”  On stage as the images appear, Volker charmingly tells the heart-warming and moving stories behind the moving images making this performance a unique combination of narration, drama, film and photography.

Since 2003 Volker has walked some 4,000km on foot, inviting people to visit his travelling “thumb book cinema” exhibition: showing people the flip books one on one. But Volker realised he could display his work to a larger audience by projecting his flipbooks on to a screen by holding a selection of his favourite portraits under a video camera.

”It’s really important to tell the stories behind the encounter. It’s not all about photo faces.

Portraits in Motion has toured internationally with the Financial Times describing it as “One of those shows you hope to stumble across, an oddity and a revelation.

“Portraits in Motion” will be shown as part of Kokomai Creative Festival 2019 at The Screening Room, Masterton on Wednesday 16^th October, 7.45pm. Following the performance there will be a Q&A session hosted by Film Talks. Volker is also presenting a cinema workshop at Aratoi on Thursday 17 October at 10am.