Quay Brothers : the short films, 1979-2003

Description

Though born in Philadelphia in 1947 and physically resident in London since the late 1970s, the identical twin Quay Brothers occupy an imaginary Mitteleuropäisches universe, to which they occasionally grant us admission via a series of teasing and tantalising short films.

From the outset, their work has defied verbal synopsis, let alone coherent interpretation. Even when adapting a literary source, narrative is supplanted by hypnotic movement of both subject and viewpoint. Meticulously calibrated focus pulls combine with suggestions that barely glimpsed activity just outside the depth of field, or even fractionally offscreen, might be just as compelling as the main point of attention. Light comes alive, dappling cracked and blistered walls, caressing clothes and bedsheets. Music carries far more weight than dialogue, which is usually relegated to a multilingual muttering. Their puppet protagonists, scratched and chipped with age and misuse, are as alive and expressive as any creature of flesh and blood.

The key to the Quays’ work, if such a thing exists, is to ignore notions of ‘meaning’ and instead try to feel their complex internal vibrations, letting their oneiric images imprint themselves directly onto the mind’s eye. — BFI

Films:
The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer (1984, 14 mins)
This Unnameable Little Broom (1985, 11 mins)
Street of Crocodiles (1986, 21 mins)
Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (1987, 14 mins)
Stille Nacht I: Dramolet (1988, 2 mins)
The Comb (1990, 17 mins)
Anamorphosis (1991, 14 mins)
Stille Nacht II: Are We Still Married (1992, 3 mins)
Stille Nacht III: Tales From Vienna Woods (1992, 4 mins)
Stille Nacht IV: Can’t Go Wrong Without You (1993, 4 mins)
In Absentia (2000, 19 mins)
The Phantom Museum (2003, 12 mins)