Given that it is structured in chapters that correspond to those in the film, Livio Belloï's book cannot be summarised in just a few words given how many themes and ideas are covered. As with Deutsch's film, each paragraph addresses a main topic that is the subject of a lengthy and thorough analysis, all while creating connections to other chapters. This is also the case with the relationship between Film ist. and contemporary experimental cinema, as connections are scattered throughout the book, offering a relatively broad overview of this 'other' cinema. Let us simply point out that Deutsch, who was born in Vienna in 1952, is part of a generation of Austrian experimental filmmakers who treated the image as both a historic and aesthetic subject. Martin Arnold is one example, but Livio Belloï focuses on Peter Tscherkassky, analysing how he and Deutsch address the question of dreams in cinema. For example, in Dream work (2001), Tscherkassky utilises endogenesis, or more simply an internal construction: in Tscherkassky's work, dreams are represented as multiple layers within the same image, since the filmmaker manipulates the original filmic material. Deutsch, in contrast, uses exogenesis: dreams exist only in the shot of young woman sleeping, and serve as a rallying point to connect various images. This is just one of the many comparisons Livio Belloï makes between Deutsch and other experimental filmmakers, whether Austrian (Tscherkassky) or not (Bill Morrisson, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi). Deutsch and those artists share the same belief in the image as a narrative tool, and have the same need to shape it in a different direction, using a principle of exploration and montage that goes beyond the concept of the image as a singular object. For Deutsch, the image is above all one cell in the larger body of the film.

Visual Thinking according to Gustav Deutsch ends with a summary table and like Film ist., provides us with an opening: in seeking to create a history of cinema using its own images, Gustav Deutsch has perhaps come close to the Mnemosyne Atlas that Aby Warburg worked on until his death, in which he attempted to create a comprehensive figurative grammar of art history. In Deutsch’s work, we begin to question chase films, ethnographic films, and the development of cinematographic language thanks to a clever montage that is designed to go beyond simple questions of definition and encourage us to question our own gaze. Deutsch, who admire Warburg, may have brought an unsuspected encyclopaedic dimension to cinema, the impact of which will only become apparent once the project (Film ist.) is finished. As the work of a lifetime, driven by the intelligence and humour of an extraordinary artist, Film ist. may be one of the most evocative histories of cinema to date.