The Man Who Could Get the Rabbit Out in Time

Unpublished works from the estate of Orson Welles at the 46^th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen

- In Cooperation with the Film Museum Munich -

For the last four years, the unpublished works of Orson Welles - more than two tons of film footage - have been stored at the Film Museum Munich; some of them have been reconstructed and presented at specialist conferences. During the Oberhausen Festival, selected pieces of this estate will be shown to a larger audience for the first time.

Welles has repeatedly dealt with particular subjects and texts, first and foremost with magic and Shakespeare. "He's a man who can get that rabbit out in time"; he once replied to the question "what characterizes a good magician?" - which might also have been the answer to the question "what characterizes a good short film director?" The programme includes pieces intended as short forms by Welles himself as well as fragments and sketches of longer projects some of which he kept following up for decades. Little has congealed into a completed shape; a lot was left unfinished, taken up again, only to be dropped once more.

In "The Magic Show" (1976-ca. 1985) Welles himself appears as a magician. In the Sketchbook Series, presumably made in the 1950s for the BBC, Welles talks about everything under the sun (and magic...). The programme also includes sketches from city portraits of Vienna and London, impossible trailers of ten minutes length for "Citizen Kane" or "F for Fake".