The Modernist Cinema - Text 4
The death in 1972 of Jerome Hill (co-founder and patron of Anthology) precipitated the closing of this initial invisible cinema: unable to continue paying its rent, in 1974 Anthology was forced to move. In the wake of this decision, Kubelka’s screening room was abandoned. Nevertheless, in his role as the Austrian Film Museum’s director he had a new version built there in 1989. This space, which was renovated in 2003, still exists today. Less radical than its New York version, it abandoned the iconic “booths,” for acoustic reasons in particular: for Kubelka, the original seats were also intended to focus reception of the sound and to minimize peripheral noise. But such a system could function only if there were a sole source of sound (placed directly behind the screen). Up-to-date audio equipment (stereo or surround sound), in which the sound comes, precisely, from the periphery, prohibited the use of booths.[6]
Barbara Rose’s enthusiasm for the first invisible cinema was not shared by everyone. The most frequent (and concrete) criticism was that it put the viewer to sleep, as the enveloping quality of the seats tended to retain the body’s warmth. In any event, the venue occupied an ambiguous position part-way between an individualized and a collective viewing system. On the one hand, its asceticism was the antithesis of prestigious picture palaces, while on the other it contrasted with emerging moving image practices such as an “expanded cinema.” One could even have reproached the invisible cinema with embodying a conservative model, the polar opposite of its avant-garde programming. But despite all else, the originality of this architectural concept remains. With it, the screening venue was conspicuously placed at the heart of the film experience. And thus, in the words of Peter Kubelka, “the screening room is a machine within cinema—the camera, laboratory and editing table are others.”[7]
