These guys have been working together since 1979, and in 1987 made a film called Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go) the inspiration behind Honda’s recent Cog TV advert. Watch the trailer for The Way Things Go and be amazed.
(I’m reminded of Mehdi Norowzian’s film Joy which was the starting point for Guinness’s Anticipation, a hugely popular advert we at NoHo Digital turned into a hugely popular screensaver. Norowzian brought a copyright infringement case against Ark, the agency responsible, which he lost. He also lost the appeal. But the process did bring about some changes in the interpretation of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA) previously under which film was only ever viewed as a recording of a dramatic work, but not a dramatic work in itself. In this case, the Court of Appeal decided that the content of a film could also be a protected as a dramatic work: “a film (including a cartoon), is a work of action; it is capable of being performed before an audience and is therefore capable of being a dramatic work under section 1(1)(a) of the CDPA”. This from Margaret Briffa’s site. Margaret was Norowzian’s attorney, and coincidentally was engaged by us at NoHo in 1999 to help us wrest back control of Online Caroline from Behaviour Communications.)
Sadly there are no trailers available for either of Fischli and Weiss’s ‘Rat and Bear’ films Der Geringste Widerstand (The Point of Least Resistance) 1981 or Der Rechte Weg (The Right Way) 1983.
Fischli and Weiss’s new show is on in London at Sprüth Magers Lee was reviewed in the Guardian recently by Adrian Searle.