In this essay I will look at Peter Kubelka’s classic film Arnulf Rainer (6 1/2 minutes, black and white, optical sound, 35mm, 1960) in terms of the way it can be seen to operate around a number of dichotomies, between dark and light and black and white, sound and image, balance and asymmetry, film-strip and projection, onscreen and in-brain, work and context. I will also consider some of the wider issues that arise about lightness and darkness generally, and about the scope and purpose of formal analysis
