An Unexpected Reception: Lyrical Nitrate Between Film History and Art

Abstract

I was left confused. I may have been a filmmaker with strong artistic impulses, but my original intention with Lyrical Nitrate had been to make a film history documentary, not a found footage film. Now, twenty years later, I look back with amusement on that hectic period. Naivety is usually not a recommendation, and it certainly should not serve as a shield to hide behind, but in my candour I truly believed I had created a mainly informative film in Lyrical Nitrate, which would be received precisely and particularly by film historians and representatives of film archives as a promotional advertisement for the products of the early era of cinema. In the end, the film has achieved that status, but in the early 1990s, this seemed far from assured.