By Manfred Naescher
Berlin, Germany: self-published, 2010
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 #6: I Walked with a Zombie (2010)
In Jacques Tourneur’s film I Walked with a Zombie (1943), the zombie is not an imminent threat, but a permanent reminder of a past that won’t recede, an undead memory. The horror, here, lies in how haunted a life can become, as opposed to horror being derived from shock effects and gore. It’s a slow-burner of a horror movie, full of symbols and hints that provide a glimpse into a world that remains incomprehensible, a world governed not by the laws of physics or logic, but by the tribal rites of voodoo, and above all by the magic of inventive, evocative filmmaking. The series of 22 watercolors in this book (48 full-color pages in a strictly limited, numbered edition of 50) builds on the film’s premise of being followed, literally and figuratively: being haunted. The zombie, devoid of life, yet undead, lives with the other protagonists for the sole purpose of being a constant presence, like a disease, or a curse. The film’s ambivalent atmosphere (tropical yet sinister, light yet tense) and haunting imagery is reimagined using a wide spectrum of the diffuse effects and sharp edges of watercolor painting, in a sepia palette that returns us to the past, like a memory.