Forever...Forever
2026 21 minutes 70mm DTS 7.1 / 5.1 & 35mm Dolby Digital-EX
August 2nd in Auckland, and August 22nd in Wellington at the Whānau Mārama New Zealand International Film Festival
August 7th at FENDA - Experimental Festival of Film Arts, Belo Hoizonte
August 11th & 20th in 35mm at the Melbourne International Film Festival
Over the course of twenty-two months, Johann Lurf fixed the gaze of a specially developed 65mm camera on a single fragment of the world: the Ottenstein Reservoir. What begins as a quiet observation of nature gradually transforms into a monumental image of cosmic motion. At first, the lake appears familiar – a place suspended between sky and water. But as the exposures grow longer, the dimensions themselves shift: stars begin to draw delicate lines, the sun inscribes bright arcs, the moon traces soft, almost calligraphic diagonals. The water surface becomes a perfect mirror that folds sky and landscape symmetrically into one another – above and below, light and shadow, becoming and fading.
As in ★, Johann explores the relationship between vision and cosmos, but here no archive emerges; instead, a sequence of images forms that becomes an astronomical figure in its own right. The reservoir turns into a planetary clock whose hands are made of light – a calm, precise choreography that evokes utopian architectures such as Tatlin’s Tower, without ever citing them directly.
The visual structure is accompanied by a sound composition by Jung An Tagen, built on the rhythms of day and night cycles, weather phenomena, and the movements of celestial bodies. This constellation of image and sound opens a resonance space that extends far beyond the visible. It recalls Laurie Spiegel’s Kepler’s Harmony of the Worlds, an electronic interpretation of Kepler’s cosmic harmony, included on the Voyager Golden Record – and long since beyond our solar system.
Finally, the panorama freezes into diagonal bands of pure light: traces written by sun and moon over many months. A film that does not narrate, but reveals how time and sky intertwine – a harmony of the world that ultimately unfolds with unexpected force.
Martin Reinhart in early 2026
(...) The screening concludes with Johann Lurf’s brand-new work Forever…Forever (Berlinale 2026). A fixed 65mm film camera not only records the events at the Ottenstein reservoir continuously over 22 months, but becomes an event in itself. The director’s Viennese colleague Martin Reinhart has described the film as “a planetary clock whose hands are made of light: it has a calm and precise choreography that recalls utopian architectures, even Tatlin’s Tower, without ever directly mentioning them.” Yet the true dynamo of this cosmological clockwork is the film’s sound: Jung An Tagen’s otherworldly beautiful composition, attuned to the movements of celestial bodies.
Mika Taanila for The Midnight Sun Film Festival, June 2026
Jeonju Review: Beyond Perception
Interview with Johann Lurf on "Forever…Forever"
Lee Hanbum: Some films still make us step back and think about what it really means “to see.” From that distance, what appears are the mechanical devices that make cinema possible, the different realities produced through those devices, and the people who witness those realities together. To understand what we have seen, we must once again enter those images and begin to wander through them. But why do we need to keep thinking about the act of seeing? Is it because seeing shapes the way we understand the world? And if so, what should we call those who live within these machines in order to create other realities through images?
Forever…Forever was filmed over 22 months from a fixed viewpoint, showing the Ottenstein Reservoir. At first, the reservoir looks like a normal and familiar landscape. But as the film continues, it slowly becomes a surface that reflects the sky—its changing weather and celestial movements—in a more abstract way. By the end, it can even feel like a metaphor for cinema itself, as a place where light is at work. Compared to your earlier film RECONNAISSANCE (2012), which focused on the Morris Reservoir in California — a site once used as a military facility—this work seems to take a different approach to the reservoir. Could you talk more about this?
Johann Lurf: The film tries to grasp larger scales of time, and I wanted a man-made structure to be in the center of our view, so we can relate better to the landscape. A dam wall is one of the most solid buildings, withstanding the forces of nature to a large extent. It transforms the landscape; it washes out and covers up the old river bed and creates a new shoreline. New life takes place on the surface, and the river’s history is hidden under water—we can only imagine it down there, somewhere. The movement and the lights in the sky are the main events in the film, so I wanted to emphasize that with the lake’s mirroring surface.
LH: As the film moves toward the later part, the image no longer feels like a landscape but more like abstract movements of light. This seems to happen because the film “accelerates.” It may be the result of the film’s structure, where the exposure time for each frame gradually becomes longer—from 8 seconds up to 24 hours. In this sense, your film could be seen as creating a kind of fiction out of reality through speed. Your earlier work VERTIGO RUSH (2007), which uses zoom-in and zoom-out movements, also seems to experiment with this idea of creating fiction through acceleration. In your work, what does “acceleration” do, and what does it mean to you?
JL: I would rather use the word experience instead of fiction, as the perception of the more abstract parts in both films are very subjective and so different for each individual. Indeed, the acceleration creates this abstraction, but only for our own senses, as humans are used to perceiving time in the usual scale of our present. Trying to imagine a different way of perceiving time, on a non-human scale, is very hard. The film makes it possible to perceive an accelerated flow of time; it also makes us see how it would feel if the flow of time itself were to accelerate gradually, finally increasing faster and faster in an exponential way. The film points in a direction like an arrow, and I hope the viewers can imagine this accelerated passing of time further, even after the film has finished. It’s important for me that this acceleration was actually filmed in camera and not artificially designed by our ideas of how this would look like.
LH: In terms of theme, this film also seems connected to your long-standing interest in the relationship between vision and the universe. The first work of yours I saw was ★ (2017), which explores how the universe has been represented in cinema in a very original way. After watching it, I felt that exploring images is not so different from exploring the universe. How have your questions about images, cinema, and the universe continued in your work?
JL: Understanding the universe is of fundamental importance to our being. Vision and hearing are the means of our perception for learning about our surroundings, and cinema brings all of these elements together. The history of images made of the universe for cinema is just one example of how we can research within images, and so much more can be learned from the images of the past. I’m most fascinated by the possibilities of the tools we designed to see further into space and into microscopic structures, to extend the range of our view, so both the history of images as well as more recent possibilities of image taking informed the research for and the concept of Forever…Forever.
LH: I understand that you invented a new 65mm film camera for this project. Could you tell us more about how you designed and used this device?
JL: I built the camera as a versatile tool which I can program in many ways. It does not need to run linearly like a conventional camera; it can gradually bend time by changing the exposure time for each frame. It consists of sprocket rolls from 70mm projectors, a photographic lens for large format film, motors, sensors, and a computer controller. I built it not only for this project but also for future films with different structures. Basically it is a hybrid between a large-format still camera and a motion picture camera, which measures the light automatically and can be programmed to operate autonomously.
LH: In relation to Forever…Forever, are there any historical contexts of experimental cinema that you were thinking about or responding to? (After watching this film, I naturally thought of Michael Snow’s works. In terms of observing a single point over a long duration, Wavelength (1967) comes to mind, and in terms of looking at the landscape from a non-human perspective, La Région Centrale (1971).
JL: Of course, Michael Snow’s work is always in my mind, in my heart.
LH: This film seems to go beyond the audiovisual and asks for a more physical, full-body experience of perception. In that sense, it feels like it emphasizes the importance of the cinema as a space. The screen is not just a surface for images, but a place where light performs, and the sound is not only something we hear, but also something we feel as physical vibration. More broadly, your films seem to keep experimenting with how we “see through depth.” In this context, your work seems to support the unique experience of the cinema in its own way. Could you share your thoughts on the cinema as a space?
JL: What I love about cinema is that it is perfectly designed for our senses: the reflective projection is easy on our eyes, also with extended viewing. The film grain structure creates an impression of depth in the pictures, which relates well to our eyes’ perception. The sound surrounds us and can change the space dramatically with its fine tunes. We agree to focus on the film with all our senses and are rewarded with a time to contemplate, feel, and be inspired. It couldn’t be much better.
LH: Cycle, repetition, and the structuring of time seem to be central questions in your work, including this film. If this film could continue repeating “forever…forever,” what do you think we would see?
JL: There is no repetition of pictures in my films, ever. The structures in my films are rhythmic but always play in variations. Each cycle contains a shift, which is sometimes more, sometimes less obvious. This way we can get immersed in the pictures and sounds and discover details we would have missed otherwise. Each time I watch the film, I see it in a different way. I bring my own perspective, which is not a constant, but rather a fluid and sometimes changing point of view. I believe it’s the same for everyone else, and one of the reasons why I make these kinds of films is to hear from the audience about what they have seen, which is often very surprising.
Über zweiundzwanzig Monate hinweg richtet Johann Lurf den Blick einer eigens entwickelten 65mm-Kamera ununterbrochen auf ein einziges Stück Welt: den Ottensteiner Stausee. Was zunächst wie eine stille Beobachtung der Natur erscheint, verwandelt sich im Laufe der Zeit in ein monumentales Bild kosmischer Bewegung. Zu Beginn wirkt der See vertraut – ein Ort zwischen Himmel und Wasser. Doch je länger die Belichtungen werden, desto stärker verschieben sich die Dimensionen: Sterne ziehen feine Linien, die Sonne schreibt helle Bögen, der Mond graviert zarte, fast kalligrafische Diagonalen. Die Wasseroberfläche wird zu einem vollkommenen Spiegel, der Himmel und Landschaft symmetrisch ineinander zurückfaltet – oben und unten, Licht und Schatten, Werden und Vergehen.
Wie schon in ★ interessiert Lurf die Beziehung zwischen Blick und Kosmos, doch diesmal entsteht kein Archiv, sondern eine Bildsequenz, die selbst zu einer astronomischen Figur wird. Der Stausee verwandelt sich in eine planetarische Uhr, deren Zeiger aus Licht bestehen: eine ruhige, präzise Choreografie, die an utopische Architekturen wie Tatlins Turm erinnert, ohne sich darauf zu berufen.
Die visuelle Struktur wird begleitet von einer von Jung An Tagen komponierten Tonspur, die auf Tages- und Nachtwechsel, Wetterphänomene und die Bewegungen der Himmelskörper aufbaut. Diese Verbindung von Bild und Ton öffnet einen Resonanzraum, der weit über das Sichtbare hinausreicht. Sie erinnert an Laurie Spiegels „Kepler’s Harmony of the Worlds“, jene elektronische Annäherung an Keplers Musik der Sphären, die auf der Voyager Golden Record Platz fand – und damit längst unser Sonnensystem verlassen hat.
Am Ende erstarrt das Panorama in diagonalen Bahnen reinen Lichts: Spuren, die Sonne und Mond über viele Monate geschrieben haben. Ein Film, der nicht erzählt, sondern sichtbar macht, wie Zeit und Himmel ineinandergreifen – eine Harmonie der Welt, die sich schließlich mit unerwarteter Kraft entfaltet.
Martin Reinhart, Anfang 2026
Näytöksen päättää Johann Lurfin uunituore teos Forever…Forever. Paikalleen pultattu 65mm:n elokuvakamera ei pelkästään kuvaa Ottensteinin varastoaltaan tapahtumia herkeämättä 22 kuukauden ajan vaan on itsessään tapahtuma. Ohjaajan wieniläinen kollega Martin Reinhart on kutsunut elokuvaa “planeettojen kelloksi, jonka viisarit on tehty valosta: sillä on rauhallinen ja tarkka koreografia, joka tuo mieleen utopistisia arkkitehtuureja, jopa Tatlinin tornin, mainitsematta niitä koskaan suoraan”. Kosmologisen kellopelin varsinainen dynamo on kuitenkin tämän elokuvan ääni, Jung An Tagenin ylimaallisen kaunis, taivaankappaleiden liikkeitä myötäilevä sävellys.
Mika Taanila for The Midnight Sun Film Festival, June 2026
August 7th at FENDA - Experimental Festival of Film Arts, Belo Hoizonte
August 11th & 20th in 35mm at the Melbourne International Film Festival
Over the course of twenty-two months, Johann Lurf fixed the gaze of a specially developed 65mm camera on a single fragment of the world: the Ottenstein Reservoir. What begins as a quiet observation of nature gradually transforms into a monumental image of cosmic motion. At first, the lake appears familiar – a place suspended between sky and water. But as the exposures grow longer, the dimensions themselves shift: stars begin to draw delicate lines, the sun inscribes bright arcs, the moon traces soft, almost calligraphic diagonals. The water surface becomes a perfect mirror that folds sky and landscape symmetrically into one another – above and below, light and shadow, becoming and fading.
As in ★, Johann explores the relationship between vision and cosmos, but here no archive emerges; instead, a sequence of images forms that becomes an astronomical figure in its own right. The reservoir turns into a planetary clock whose hands are made of light – a calm, precise choreography that evokes utopian architectures such as Tatlin’s Tower, without ever citing them directly.
The visual structure is accompanied by a sound composition by Jung An Tagen, built on the rhythms of day and night cycles, weather phenomena, and the movements of celestial bodies. This constellation of image and sound opens a resonance space that extends far beyond the visible. It recalls Laurie Spiegel’s Kepler’s Harmony of the Worlds, an electronic interpretation of Kepler’s cosmic harmony, included on the Voyager Golden Record – and long since beyond our solar system.
Finally, the panorama freezes into diagonal bands of pure light: traces written by sun and moon over many months. A film that does not narrate, but reveals how time and sky intertwine – a harmony of the world that ultimately unfolds with unexpected force.
Martin Reinhart in early 2026
(...) The screening concludes with Johann Lurf’s brand-new work Forever…Forever (Berlinale 2026). A fixed 65mm film camera not only records the events at the Ottenstein reservoir continuously over 22 months, but becomes an event in itself. The director’s Viennese colleague Martin Reinhart has described the film as “a planetary clock whose hands are made of light: it has a calm and precise choreography that recalls utopian architectures, even Tatlin’s Tower, without ever directly mentioning them.” Yet the true dynamo of this cosmological clockwork is the film’s sound: Jung An Tagen’s otherworldly beautiful composition, attuned to the movements of celestial bodies.
Mika Taanila for The Midnight Sun Film Festival, June 2026
Jeonju Review: Beyond Perception
Interview with Johann Lurf on "Forever…Forever"
Lee Hanbum: Some films still make us step back and think about what it really means “to see.” From that distance, what appears are the mechanical devices that make cinema possible, the different realities produced through those devices, and the people who witness those realities together. To understand what we have seen, we must once again enter those images and begin to wander through them. But why do we need to keep thinking about the act of seeing? Is it because seeing shapes the way we understand the world? And if so, what should we call those who live within these machines in order to create other realities through images?
Forever…Forever was filmed over 22 months from a fixed viewpoint, showing the Ottenstein Reservoir. At first, the reservoir looks like a normal and familiar landscape. But as the film continues, it slowly becomes a surface that reflects the sky—its changing weather and celestial movements—in a more abstract way. By the end, it can even feel like a metaphor for cinema itself, as a place where light is at work. Compared to your earlier film RECONNAISSANCE (2012), which focused on the Morris Reservoir in California — a site once used as a military facility—this work seems to take a different approach to the reservoir. Could you talk more about this?
Johann Lurf: The film tries to grasp larger scales of time, and I wanted a man-made structure to be in the center of our view, so we can relate better to the landscape. A dam wall is one of the most solid buildings, withstanding the forces of nature to a large extent. It transforms the landscape; it washes out and covers up the old river bed and creates a new shoreline. New life takes place on the surface, and the river’s history is hidden under water—we can only imagine it down there, somewhere. The movement and the lights in the sky are the main events in the film, so I wanted to emphasize that with the lake’s mirroring surface.
LH: As the film moves toward the later part, the image no longer feels like a landscape but more like abstract movements of light. This seems to happen because the film “accelerates.” It may be the result of the film’s structure, where the exposure time for each frame gradually becomes longer—from 8 seconds up to 24 hours. In this sense, your film could be seen as creating a kind of fiction out of reality through speed. Your earlier work VERTIGO RUSH (2007), which uses zoom-in and zoom-out movements, also seems to experiment with this idea of creating fiction through acceleration. In your work, what does “acceleration” do, and what does it mean to you?
JL: I would rather use the word experience instead of fiction, as the perception of the more abstract parts in both films are very subjective and so different for each individual. Indeed, the acceleration creates this abstraction, but only for our own senses, as humans are used to perceiving time in the usual scale of our present. Trying to imagine a different way of perceiving time, on a non-human scale, is very hard. The film makes it possible to perceive an accelerated flow of time; it also makes us see how it would feel if the flow of time itself were to accelerate gradually, finally increasing faster and faster in an exponential way. The film points in a direction like an arrow, and I hope the viewers can imagine this accelerated passing of time further, even after the film has finished. It’s important for me that this acceleration was actually filmed in camera and not artificially designed by our ideas of how this would look like.
LH: In terms of theme, this film also seems connected to your long-standing interest in the relationship between vision and the universe. The first work of yours I saw was ★ (2017), which explores how the universe has been represented in cinema in a very original way. After watching it, I felt that exploring images is not so different from exploring the universe. How have your questions about images, cinema, and the universe continued in your work?
JL: Understanding the universe is of fundamental importance to our being. Vision and hearing are the means of our perception for learning about our surroundings, and cinema brings all of these elements together. The history of images made of the universe for cinema is just one example of how we can research within images, and so much more can be learned from the images of the past. I’m most fascinated by the possibilities of the tools we designed to see further into space and into microscopic structures, to extend the range of our view, so both the history of images as well as more recent possibilities of image taking informed the research for and the concept of Forever…Forever.
LH: I understand that you invented a new 65mm film camera for this project. Could you tell us more about how you designed and used this device?
JL: I built the camera as a versatile tool which I can program in many ways. It does not need to run linearly like a conventional camera; it can gradually bend time by changing the exposure time for each frame. It consists of sprocket rolls from 70mm projectors, a photographic lens for large format film, motors, sensors, and a computer controller. I built it not only for this project but also for future films with different structures. Basically it is a hybrid between a large-format still camera and a motion picture camera, which measures the light automatically and can be programmed to operate autonomously.
LH: In relation to Forever…Forever, are there any historical contexts of experimental cinema that you were thinking about or responding to? (After watching this film, I naturally thought of Michael Snow’s works. In terms of observing a single point over a long duration, Wavelength (1967) comes to mind, and in terms of looking at the landscape from a non-human perspective, La Région Centrale (1971).
JL: Of course, Michael Snow’s work is always in my mind, in my heart.
LH: This film seems to go beyond the audiovisual and asks for a more physical, full-body experience of perception. In that sense, it feels like it emphasizes the importance of the cinema as a space. The screen is not just a surface for images, but a place where light performs, and the sound is not only something we hear, but also something we feel as physical vibration. More broadly, your films seem to keep experimenting with how we “see through depth.” In this context, your work seems to support the unique experience of the cinema in its own way. Could you share your thoughts on the cinema as a space?
JL: What I love about cinema is that it is perfectly designed for our senses: the reflective projection is easy on our eyes, also with extended viewing. The film grain structure creates an impression of depth in the pictures, which relates well to our eyes’ perception. The sound surrounds us and can change the space dramatically with its fine tunes. We agree to focus on the film with all our senses and are rewarded with a time to contemplate, feel, and be inspired. It couldn’t be much better.
LH: Cycle, repetition, and the structuring of time seem to be central questions in your work, including this film. If this film could continue repeating “forever…forever,” what do you think we would see?
JL: There is no repetition of pictures in my films, ever. The structures in my films are rhythmic but always play in variations. Each cycle contains a shift, which is sometimes more, sometimes less obvious. This way we can get immersed in the pictures and sounds and discover details we would have missed otherwise. Each time I watch the film, I see it in a different way. I bring my own perspective, which is not a constant, but rather a fluid and sometimes changing point of view. I believe it’s the same for everyone else, and one of the reasons why I make these kinds of films is to hear from the audience about what they have seen, which is often very surprising.
Über zweiundzwanzig Monate hinweg richtet Johann Lurf den Blick einer eigens entwickelten 65mm-Kamera ununterbrochen auf ein einziges Stück Welt: den Ottensteiner Stausee. Was zunächst wie eine stille Beobachtung der Natur erscheint, verwandelt sich im Laufe der Zeit in ein monumentales Bild kosmischer Bewegung. Zu Beginn wirkt der See vertraut – ein Ort zwischen Himmel und Wasser. Doch je länger die Belichtungen werden, desto stärker verschieben sich die Dimensionen: Sterne ziehen feine Linien, die Sonne schreibt helle Bögen, der Mond graviert zarte, fast kalligrafische Diagonalen. Die Wasseroberfläche wird zu einem vollkommenen Spiegel, der Himmel und Landschaft symmetrisch ineinander zurückfaltet – oben und unten, Licht und Schatten, Werden und Vergehen.
Wie schon in ★ interessiert Lurf die Beziehung zwischen Blick und Kosmos, doch diesmal entsteht kein Archiv, sondern eine Bildsequenz, die selbst zu einer astronomischen Figur wird. Der Stausee verwandelt sich in eine planetarische Uhr, deren Zeiger aus Licht bestehen: eine ruhige, präzise Choreografie, die an utopische Architekturen wie Tatlins Turm erinnert, ohne sich darauf zu berufen.
Die visuelle Struktur wird begleitet von einer von Jung An Tagen komponierten Tonspur, die auf Tages- und Nachtwechsel, Wetterphänomene und die Bewegungen der Himmelskörper aufbaut. Diese Verbindung von Bild und Ton öffnet einen Resonanzraum, der weit über das Sichtbare hinausreicht. Sie erinnert an Laurie Spiegels „Kepler’s Harmony of the Worlds“, jene elektronische Annäherung an Keplers Musik der Sphären, die auf der Voyager Golden Record Platz fand – und damit längst unser Sonnensystem verlassen hat.
Am Ende erstarrt das Panorama in diagonalen Bahnen reinen Lichts: Spuren, die Sonne und Mond über viele Monate geschrieben haben. Ein Film, der nicht erzählt, sondern sichtbar macht, wie Zeit und Himmel ineinandergreifen – eine Harmonie der Welt, die sich schließlich mit unerwarteter Kraft entfaltet.
Martin Reinhart, Anfang 2026
Näytöksen päättää Johann Lurfin uunituore teos Forever…Forever. Paikalleen pultattu 65mm:n elokuvakamera ei pelkästään kuvaa Ottensteinin varastoaltaan tapahtumia herkeämättä 22 kuukauden ajan vaan on itsessään tapahtuma. Ohjaajan wieniläinen kollega Martin Reinhart on kutsunut elokuvaa “planeettojen kelloksi, jonka viisarit on tehty valosta: sillä on rauhallinen ja tarkka koreografia, joka tuo mieleen utopistisia arkkitehtuureja, jopa Tatlinin tornin, mainitsematta niitä koskaan suoraan”. Kosmologisen kellopelin varsinainen dynamo on kuitenkin tämän elokuvan ääni, Jung An Tagenin ylimaallisen kaunis, taivaankappaleiden liikkeitä myötäilevä sävellys.
Mika Taanila for The Midnight Sun Film Festival, June 2026