The city and the self, music and the human voice, being and time, this collection of early works by Angela Schanelec illuminate an artist who from the very beginning was already shaping the cinematographic form in her own image and voice.

Programme

Lovely Yellow Color (Schöne gelbe Farbe)
dir. Angela Schanelec, Germany 1991, German with English subtitles, 5 min.

Poetic monologue and structural formalism combine in Angela Schanelec's first short film, as an empty apartment is sketched by a continuous pan and Schanelec's own voice recounts a palpable uneasiness.

Far Away (Weit entfert)
dir. Angela Schanelec, Germany 1992, German with English subtitles, 9 min

Ellipses, music, and a state of being that feels both entirely in the present and yet weighed upon by the very nature of existence, Far Away, despite being only Schanelec's second film bares many of the marks and threads that would define her work to come.

Prague, March ‘92 (Prag, März 92)
dir. Angela Schanelec, Germany 1992, 15 min.

Returning once again to her own voice and image, as she did in many of these early works, Schanelec crafts both a temporally specific portrait of the city of Prague and through her reading of excerpts from an essay by the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal renders it eternal. 'There is no time other than one's own' reads a title at the films beginning, and yet in one's own time there appears to be all of time, the film seems to reply.

I Stayed in Berlin All Summer (Ich bin den Sommer über in Berlin geblieben)
dir. Angela Schanelec, Germany 1994, 47 min.

A film of pairs, be it the two couples at its centre or their alternating dialogues and monologues, Angela Schanelec's thesis film from the DFFB is a subtle exploration of romantic miscommunication and (mis)understanding.