
User Score
8 votes
A silent, lyrical short in which a boy’s newly won goldfish is threatened by the family cat, and saved through a quiet act of animal solidarity.
Director
Writer
Status
Released
Original Language
FR

The First Piano Quartette is a 1954 short documentary film directed by Otto Lang. It shows the First Piano Quartette composed of Adan Garner, Edward Edson, Frank Mittler and Glauco D'Attilli as they play Lecuona's "Malaguena," Debussy's "Clair de Lune," and John Phillip Sousa's "The Stars and Stripes Forever." The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Short Subject, One-Reel.
"This piece, with the generic title Film, is a series of short videos built around one protocol: a snippet of news from a newspaper of the day, is rolled up and then placed on a black-inked surface. On making contact with the liquid, the roll opens and of Its own accord frees itself of the gesture that fashioned it. As it comes alive in this way, the sliver of paper reveals Its hitherto unexposed content; this unpredictable kinematics is evidence of the constant impermanence of news. As well as exploring a certain archaeology of cinema, the mechanism references the passage of time: the ink, whether it is poured or printed, is the ink of ongoing human history." –Ismaïl Bahri