Zbigniew Rybczynski
«Steps»

«In 1990, I suggested a screening and discussion of «Steps» (1987), Rybczynski‘s impudent integration of a voyeuristic group of contemporary American tourists into a scene from Sergei Eisenstein’s film classic «The Battleship Potemkin», which is, to date, his masterpiece in High Vision that runs for twenty-four minutes. It was to a circle of illustrious members of the newly founded European Film Academy at the Berlin Academy of Arts, and my suggestion was met with outrage and a flat refusal. Rybczynski’s daring film was branded as blasphemous. ‹We are living on the edge of time,› says the tour guide in «Steps». With the exception of a Russian and a Lithuanian student, my colleagues and the other students at the Academy of Arts and the Media in Cologne did not understand Rybczynski’s special power and identity as a TNRA. They let him and his totally unique special effects studio for art production go back to Los Angeles again, where he now works with Paul Vlahos, the inventor of ultramatting, on realizing his ideas for a future autonomous cinema with cutting-edge technology.»

(Siegfried Zielinski, «Zbig Vision Ltd. Miniature of Zbigniew Rybczynski», in: Jeffrey Shaw/Peter Weibel (eds), Future Cinema. The cinematic Imaginary after Film, exhib. cat., The MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.), London, 2003, p. 199.)