Between Dream and Reality
Premiere of the desert adventure of the Falkensee
production firm Micafilm, shot on Polaroid
Karen Grunow, MŠrkische Allgemeine, p.17, 12/14/09
FALKENSEE/BERLIN We are all Lubitsch. Even on the day
after the premiere, the stamp shows clearly on the lower arm of everyone who
wanted to see the most recent film of the Falkensee production firm Micafilm. Till
Death Do Us Part was shown at the Babylon
Cinema in Berlin.
The idea of inserting
intertitles into the pictorial sequence of Polaroid photos by the artist
Stefanie Schneider awakens associations with the silent film era. In that sense
the site for the premiere was well-chosen, inasmuch as even today silent films
are presented with live musical accompaniment in the Hans-Poelzig-Complex. With
Schneider's film Till Death Do Us Part,
realized with the support of Micafilm, there was also music after the film: The
main protagonist, Daisy McCrackin, had composed the soundtrack for the
31-minute-long story of love and separation, after which she gave a short
concert.
Stefanie Schneider, trained at
the Folkwang-Schule in Essen, became famous with Polaroid photographs: She
works with expired film material which is not always free of defects. This
creates effects which Stefanie Schneider cannot influence but most certainly
seeks. Her photographs from the California desert seem like images created in
atmospheric colors. The glaring sunlight in the barren landscape establishes
the fundamental tone, Eugen Blume from the Hamburger Bahnhof once observed in
an endeavor to explain how Stefanie Schneider's so highly artificial pictorial
worlds represent an American truth for him. She herself rhapsodizes:
"There is nothing like Polaroid. Right from the beginning, it looks
different than reality, and you seem to hit upon entirely different aspects,
because this moment both brings life to a standstill and simultaneously is so
vivid an instant of life." Together with the James-Bond director Marc
Forster, for whose film Stay she was
responsible for the optics, she set up the project 29 Palms, CA. The two wanted to make an entire feature film on
Polaroid. Till Death Do Us Part
now represents, as it were, an episode of this overall project. With the
support of the two experienced television producers Mirjana Momirovic and
Caroline Haertel from Micafilm in Falkensee, Stefanie Schneider was able to
shoot the film in the summer of 2008.
It recounts the love story of
Cristal (Daisy McCrackin) and Margarita (Austen Tate). The two women encounter
each other in the desert, at the desolate trailer park 29 Palms. Both want to
make a break with their past and, amid the solitude, in their longing for a new
beginning, they soon become enamored of each other.
Functioning extremely well is
the experiment of setting photo alongside photo, but interrupted by short film
sequences shot in Super-8. This alters customary viewing habits, demonstrates
that a picture can definitely capture the mood and idea of an entire protracted
scene. A film which is a plea for the power of photography, which reduces the
act of seeing to its essential elements.
A success for the two ladies of the Falkensee film production. Caroline Haertel, who is praised by an exuberant Stefanie Schneider as "the very best producer in the world," calls the film a "project of the heart." It is a women's project in all aspects. "Utterly crazy," says Barbara HŠbe from Arte. After the well-attended premiere at the Babylon Cinema, she relates that she was swept away by the forceful current of the images. Arte was responsible, together with the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, for the financing of the project. Some of the photos from the film may currently be seen at the Artbar 71 in Berlin.
Info: The exhibition 29 Palms,
CA will run until January 23, 2010 at the Artbar 71, Kronenstra§e 71,
Berlin-Mitte, open daily from 7:00 p.m. Further information concerning the
photo-film project of Stefanie Schneider may be found at
www.twentyninepalms.ca.