Uliisses
"Werner Nekes, one of the best known of the German experimental/avantgarde filmmakers, has attempted a stylistic tour-de-force in ULIISSES, which derives not only from James Joyce and Homer but from Neil Oram's The Warp. The result, for the experimentally minded, is a fascinating transposition of visual and verbal motifs from the originals into what Nekes calls a 'Homerian journey through the history of the pictures of light, ordinarily called photography and cinematography.' He takes the brain as the creator of light (in this case Ulysses' brain) and transposes his wanderings into a contemporary setting, i.e., West Germany in September 1980. Ulysses/Bloom becomes a photographer named Uli, Penelope/Molly becomes his model and Telemachus/Stephen becomes Phil. The 'narrative' of the film consists of analogues of Homerian episodes involving Calypso, Nestor, the Lotus Eaters, Proteus, the Cyclops, etc. Nekes concludes his film with visual storm, the culmination of what he describes as 'Lighterature' or writing with light." K.W.
Aus: canyon cinema, film/video catalog 2000
"This film is a Homeric journey through the history of film. Its subject is the mythological Odysseus of Homer, James Joyce's Ulysses, and the synthetical Telemach/Phil figure of Neil Oram. Werner Nekes combines these three characters and unfolds their story in analogy to the history of Lichteratur, i.e. writing in light = film. Yet his main subject is visual language itself. Odysseus/Bloom is transformed into Uli the photographer. Penelope/Molly is his model, while Telemach/Stephen becomes Phil at the outset of Telemachia. The joining of their vitae occurs one day in September 1980 in the Ruhr area, just before the German elections.” (From the information leaflet the producer).
"... Nekes' latest film provokes praise such as this in a very special way. In my opinion Uliisses is his masterpiece up to date. As an excellent historian of cinematography, Nekes has always taken care that his own inventions are correlated to history as such. In this narrative the instruments of cinematographic history are reflected upon in their influence on our perception of the world, as well as in their metaphorical realization. Uliisses offers a wealth in metaphors of light, as no other director has previously achieved.” (Bazon Brock, Aug. 1982)
"Uliisses by Werner Nekes. The most bizarre of cinema trips of the last few years takes us from Dublin to the Ruhrgebiet from a cinematic location named Casablanca to a town, no less unreal, called Poona. We encounter both Groucho Marx and Helmut Schmidt, we meet the dispersed personell of Homer’s ‘Odyssey', of James Joyce's 'Ulysses' and of Neil Oram's experimental play ‘The Warp'. These strata overlap and interpenetrate in a complex process. But 'Uliisses' (a pun on 'it's Uli', Uli the photographer from the Ruhr, grandson to Leopold Bloom) turns out to be a picaresque and an erotic adventure as well. Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, the expert on the German avantgarde film scene, so basely deserted by official sponsorship and distribution, comments on 'Uliisses': 'The object of the odyssey is pictorial language as such: learning to see and wanting to see. It ranges from cinematographic archaeology to playful innovations of the latest kind.' Werner Nekes, a great magician and inventor, who is constantly devising new machines and optical tricks in his workshop in Mülheim, works with phosphoric dust, laser beans and computer-controlled sequences: 'the world as cinematograph picture puzzle' (Nekes). There is no film technique that does not occur in this movie. 'U1iisses' acquires attentive viewing - and this more than once. Possibly the cinema is no longer the right medium for film like 'Uliisses', Nekes said recently in Cannes The film's details disclose themselves only after one has seen it several times on video disc or cassette. Nevertheless, ever a movie screen, 'U1iisses' remains an unusual, and at times a bewildering pleasure."
(Hans-Christoph Blumenberg, Die Zeit, May 1983)
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