The fourth issue of Screenshots consists of 36 pages of fighting scenes in watercolor. Based on films of various eras and genres (from La Strada to The Bourne Supremacy), this series of drawings …

… coalesces into one continuous book-length/five-decade-long fighting scene. The zine’s drawings of man-on-man fighting are based on film frames from The Wild One (Laslo Benedek, 1953) with Marlon Brando as a motorcycle gang leader, Fellini’s La Strada (with Anthony Quinn as the Great Zampano, 1954), East of Eden (with James Dean, by Elia Kazan, 1954), the spaghetti western Django (Sergio Corbucci, 1966), the headbanger mockumentary Fubar (Michael Dowse, 2002), and the slick action movie The Bourne Supremacy (Paul Greengrass, 2004).

By imposing a uniform color scheme and omitting the original scenes’ backgrounds, the initially diverse imagery gains narrative cohesion. Furthermore, the anonymous protagonists in their voided locations create an iconography of fighting that ranges from troubled men’s awkward shoving (Fubar) and clumsy fist fights (La Strada, The Wild One) through emotional, violent outbursts (East of Eden) and brute macho aggression (Django) to the precision of Matt Damon’s man-as-weapon in The Bourne Supremacy. Arranged in a non-chronological, non-hierarchical order, the drawings create a subjective iconographic compendium of male aggression, as well as a narrative of pure action; the whole story is about nothing but fighting, and fighting alone.

Facts & Figures
Mission Statement: Screenshots is an homage to film in the form of a picture fanzine: A series of books of drawings (or paintings or mixed media works) based on images from films. The screenshots (often also called screen captures or screen grabs, i.e., still images from a paused film) that serve as the basis for the drawings are selected through a predetermined principle that varies from issue to issue. For example, for the first issue of the series, Conte de printemps (A Tale of Springtime, 1990) by Eric Rohmer (56 pages, 25 drawings in watercolor and pencil; February 2009), the starting point was that each image was to be a literal screenshot by having an actual television or computer screen in the frame. In interpreting films through the media of drawing and books, each appropriated series of screenshots turns into a subjective take on cinematic memory, a play with narrative forms and their inherent properties of drama and artifice. The narrative feature film is transformed into a fragmented series of still images in a book - a complex, collaborative production is processed through the intimate and personal act of drawing and self-publishing.
Founded: February 2009, by Manfred Naescher
Based in: Berlin, Germany
Editors / Designers: Manfred Naescher
Periodicity: Approximately bi-monthly
Language: English, but usually purely visual
Format: A5 (8.25 by 5.75 inches), staple-bound, 36 to 64 pages, full color
Circulation: 50 - 400
Price: 12 €
Web: manfrednaescher.com
Contact: manfred (at) manfrednaescher.com

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