In his work on the history of the gaze, Carl Havelange describes an "ancient order" and a "new order", with the latter based on a "third element" which mediates between the naked eye and the world. For more than a hundred years, the cinematograph has been such a mediator, this "third element": the images filmed by the Lumière brothers served no other purpose than to capture the essence of the world and offer it up for our entertainment. The beauty of found footage lies precisely in its ability to divert the logic of the gaze, as Livio Belloï reminds us: "the particularity of found footage is that it produces a film that is the sum of the gazes produced by others. Film ist. is not so much a film as an optical device." Much like the first filmmakers the Lumière brothers, Deutsch offers the viewer images of the world. He does this by eschewing oral commentary and verbal remarks, as he is not trying to describe "his" history of cinema (as did Jean-Luc Godard in Histoire(s) du cinéma) nor even a "history of silent film, but rather a silent history of cinema", as Livio Belloï explains at the end of his book.

As filmmaker Samuel Fuller once said, film is “in one word, emotions!" Fuller’s definition is well known among cinephiles, and Livio Belloï believes that it reaches its fullest expression in Film ist. Throughout his film, Deutsch questions images, brings the reader along in his reflection without ignoring emotional impact: curiosity, strangeness, outrage, but also humour and tenderness, etc. The artist is on a veritable quest for visual expression, much like the avant-garde filmmakers of the 1920s. At certain times, as when he plays with variations in the speed of the image, Deutsch seems to follow in the footsteps of those early filmmakers. Deutsch's relationship with these avant-gardists vacillates between homage and continued reflection. However, there is an ironic element: the researcher mentions Chapter 10.1, a surprising segment in which intertitles succeed each other in the complete absence of any image. In René Clair and Germaine Dulac's vision of "pure cinema", film should eschew any form of writing to focus solely on images, visual composition, and rhythm: a film without words. Deutsch, somewhat derisively, took the opposing view and made a film that could be considered "impure": a series of texts in the absence of a diegetic world; in short, a film without images. A bit of clever humour that is actually quite pertinent. 

(1) Carl Havelange, De l'oeil au monde. Une histoire du regard au seuil de la modernité, Paris, Fayard, 1998.