Chronicles From The Future: The amazing story of Paul Amadeus Dienach

Two professional film directors of my time made their own films about the Great War, one focusing on London called Waterloo and the other one on the Balkans with his film The Last Bridge

. If only they knew that due to a number of coincidences their works would survive after so many centuries while millions of other films—possibly much better ones and not as commercial—have been long lost, they would have been so proud!

Now that I mention Waterloo, I remember the derogatory way they spoke of Napoleon who, after his army was almost completely destroyed, said that “one night suffices for the French women to rebuild the great army,” reducing human beings to mere flesh. Stefan told me: “Every person is a whole world. Do not touch it. Do not interfere with it. First of all, you can’t, and second of all, you have no right to! The esoteric person is independent of the physical aspect of the individual, completely irrelevant to their material or biological existence. They are made up of a vast moral universe of dreams, ideals, moving life stories of tenderness and affection, love, humanism and sacred human suffering. And no Napoleon can ever destroy that.”

ART AND 3D THEATRES

In their museums and galleries, next to the exhibits of their most famous works—mostly the masterpieces of their 9th century—they also display some artworks of our 19th century, mainly from the fields of music, poetry and the Art of Discourse, as well as several works of the plastic arts of the Renaissance. I wonder if anything from the 20th century, the “times of decadence and darkness” as they call it, has survived. Probably nothing that is related to art, but perhaps something from our technology.

Last night they took me to the centre of Blomsterfor, to the famous outdoor theatre of Arlington with the artificial air-conditioners that sufficiently covered every inch of that huge, amphitheatrically-designed open space. They call it an “arena”, but the meaning of this word has changed throughout the years and has now come to mean “open-air”, without referring to the shape of the theatres, which is, however, usually circular or ellipsoid, or their architecture, and without implying any connection whatsoever to the ancient Roman amphitheatres. And the truth is that it looks nothing like them. That monumental complex of buildings truly amazes you from the moment you see it, at first for its size and its elegance and then for the unlimited possibilities of its stage. Every single minute in that theatre makes you feel like you’ve entered a magical parallel universe; it gives the impression of a legend or a fairy tale brought to life, in the service of mankind!

The scenes alternate with the same ease as on the Reigen-Swage

. And in both cases, directors can use all their genius and talent. Although in the Reigen-Swage you know that everything you see—including the characters, who are nothing but actors—is artificial, it all feels completely real; as if you’re living among them, as if you’re part of the story. And even if you turn your head in any direction, the action continues to unfold uninterrupted, apparently thanks to some kind of miraculous combination of “laser beams”, offering the spectator these magical panoramas. Here, too, the plot unfolds before your eyes stereoscopically, enhancing the illusion of depth, only now, you’re not a part of the spectacle. If you take a look around, you can see the stone-built tiers of the amphitheatre as well as the thousands of other spectators that fill them.

Here the actors are real and so are their voices. The dialogues and noises are live. However, the technical resources have reached such a level of perfection that the clouds you see, the sky, the rivers, the houses, the stones and all sorts of landscapes, seem as real as the ones around you, below you and above you! Of course, if you went closer and tried to touch them, they’d disappear. Here all viewers, regardless of their position or their actual distance from the stage, see and hear the actors through the transparent rectangular crystal in front of the seat, which is flanked by a magical tape that reproduces sound! A spectator in the upper tier seats sees and hears them with the same ease as a spectator in the front row seats.

In short, with the exception of the dynamic vividness of the actors’ performances and the vibrancy of their voices—voices here just need to be clear and with correct articulation, the volume isn’t important, like in our era—everything else feels like the stuff of dreams and fairy tales, just like in the Swage. That’s probably why these colossal, hollow theatres of current times have been designed with such unlimited possibilities: to create that dream-like atmosphere.