A ‘behind the scenes’-view of film projection in a mobile cinema tent: a steam-powered generator set provides energy for a projector (an ‘Imperator’ from Heinrich Ernemann AG, Dresden) mounted on a wagon, horse-drawn caravans moving cinematic equipment and machinery.
The fragment seems to provide an undisguised view of the realities of mobile military cinema used for entertainment and the ideological calibration of soldiers in the Austrian-Hungarian Army, but it is actually an example of the manipulative abilities of the moving image. Including scenes clearly staged for the camera and an ad for the Sascha-Messter Wochenschau, this short fragment was only recently identified as one of many fragmented surviving parts of the propaganda-piece Wien im Krieg, a love story about men going to war and women having to contribute their share in the home country, produced by Sascha-Messter Film in 1916.

Anna Dobringer