By Manfred Naescher
Berlin, Germany: self-published, 2009
Pages: 48
Dimensions: 8.1” in x 5.7” in
Cover: cardstock
Binding: staplebound
Process: digital printing
Color: full color throughout
Edition Size: 50
ISBN: none

Manfred Naescher's publications are well executed from the generation of hand painted images of screenshots from movies that fill his publications, to the exacting and beautiful layout and printing. Naescher doesn't make a lot of copies of each booklet so get this one while you can.

On the zine series Screenshots:
Screenshots is both an homage and an exploration of film in the form of an ongoing series of picture fanzines; a printed publication of recontextualized, reconfigured cinematic imagery, as interpreted through serial paintings. Each appropriated series of screenshots turns into a subjective take on cinematic memory, in a deliberate play with narrative forms and their inherent property of artifice. Source imagery from motion pictures is transformed into a fragmented series of reimagined still images in a zine—a complex, collaborative production is processed through the personal act of drawing, painting, and self-publishing.

Screenshots #3: The French Connection
This issue of Screenshots is concerned with only one scene: The car/elevated train chase, as reflected in Gene Hackman’s face. The book presents a series of portraits of Hackman’s cop on the hunt. The watercolors focus exclusively on Hackman’s facial expressions, while the actual car and the context of the chase remain strictly peripheral and undepicted. An homage to the power of acting (it is a scene free of gimmicks, quick cuts and other means of distraction), this series lays bare the visceral intensity and clear focus of Gene Hackman’s art.