A film of few words and extraordinary images, Instant Pictures explores on several levels the alienating and voyeuristic potentials of photography ("the principal device for...giving the appearance of participation"-Susan Sontag). The film follows 24 hours in the life of Victor Veri, photographer and obsessive voyeur. Carrying a Czech passport, speaking English, and arriving on a Danish tour bus, Veri could hardly be more anonymous in the Dutch town which he has chosen at random to explore with the purpose of observing and photographing people-women, in particular. Veri's detachment is threatened when a woman taxi driver returns his distanced fascination.
The first film which director George Schouten made with a crew (having made some 15 short films and a dramatized documentary before this), Instant Pictures was featured at the Edinburgh Film Festival, 1980, and at Los Angeles' Filmex, where it was described as a "totally unclassifiable film (which) reveals occasional glimpses of visual genius as its images repeatedly mystify and haunt the viewer" (Ying Ying Wu).