Four by Angela Schanelec
Angela Schanelec is one of the great visionaries of contemporary cinema. Born in West Germany in 1962 and trained at the German Film and Television Academy in newly reunified Berlin, Schanelec’s work is in dialogue with Berlin School peers and co-pioneers Christian Petzold, Thomas Arslan, and Christoph Hochhäusler, but is also an oeuvre that is entirely singular. The four works in these program trace an evolution in Schanelec’s style, beginning with her most accessible and critically-lauded I Was at Home, But..., panning back to two early films, and finally moving to her second most recent work, Music (her newest film, Meine Frau weint, won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlinale and has yet to release in the United States).
These are films of warm summer afternoons, open windows, of people lingering in parks and apartments, of conversations drifting in and out of clarity. They are generous and intimate films; full of emotion but at a remove. Schanelec is interested in an anti-visualization of feeling; her withholding direction, inspired by Robert Bresson, intends to make the viewer “bear [feeling] by himself” rather than letting it be absorbed by an actor’s performance. They are generous and intimate films. Time, memory, the city, and love are fragile, elusive things, and flashes of understanding arrive only with sustained attention: according to Schanelec herself, “all of my films are based on the thought that the better part of life is inscrutable, full of misunderstandings and ruled by chance."
I Was at Home, But... (2019)
Angela Schanelec · 105m · DCP
Perhaps Schanelec’s most acclaimed film to date, I Was at Home, But… draws on Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar and Hamlet in this family drama of a prodigal son’s return. Longtime Schanelec collaborator Maren Eggert gives a grounding performance as a mother in crisis dealing with the her teenage son’s return after his unexplained disappearance. Ozu’s influence goes beyond the title, a play on I Was Born, But...; Schanelec was inspired by the "very very deep kindness in those films. And mercy."
Courtesy of Cinema Guild.
Tuesday, July 21 8:00 PM · Friday, July 24 5:00 PM
Afternoon (2007)
Angela Schanelec · 95m · DCP
Set over the course of languid summer days at a lake house outside Berlin, Afternoon reinterprets Chekhov’s The Seagull into a contemporary drama of desire and estrangement. When actress Irene (played by Schanelec herself) returns to visit her brother and her son, old wounds and resentments come to the surface. Bathed in soft afternoon light, the film allows its tangle of relationships to emerge in the subtlest of gestures and silences.
Courtesy of the Deutsche Kinemathek.
Thursday, July 30 8:00 PM · Friday, July 31 5:00 PM
Passing Summer (2001)
Angela Schanelec · 81m · DCP
A web of relations between everyday city-dwellers — lovers, friends, relatives, and chance acquaintances — is quietly drawn out over the course of a languid Berlin summer (the German title translates to My Slow Life). The central figure, Valerie (Ursina Lardi), drifts about in the same emptiness and circularity of the season itself, as she waits for something to happen, for her life to change.
Courtesy of the Deutsche Kinemathek.
Thursday, August 6 8:00 PM · Friday, August 7 5:00 PM
Music (2023)
Angela Schanelec · 109m · DCP
Set between Berlin streets and Greek mountains and beaches, Music takes from Mouchette, Straub-Huillet, and the Oedipus myth. One of Schanelec’s most recent features, the film follows Jon, abandoned as a child and adopted without knowledge of his mother or father. As an adult, Jon is imprisoned after killing an attacker; in prison he begins a romance with guard Iro, drawn together by their love of Monteverdi, Bach, and Pergolesi.
Courtesy of Cinema Guild.
