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Schein sein (Seems to Be)

Director(s):	Bady Minck
Producer(s):	AMOUR FOU LUXEMBOURG Amour Fou Vienna (AT), Innovative Film Austria (AT), ORF (AT), KGP (AT)
Script:	Patrick Ridremont, Jean-Sébastien Lopez, Bady Minck
Year:	2008
Form:	FICTION - Short film
Original version:	without dialogues
Running time:	8'

Synopsis

Based on Morton Feldman's "Madame Press Died Last Week at Ninety", Seems To Be plays with the levels of optic and aural perception, with the deception of eyes and ears as well as the tension between two-dimensional reproduction and three-dimensional spatial recreation.

Accompanied by murmuring, the sound of scribbling and hummed snatches of music, the camera sweeps over a collection of materials on a desktop, seemingly reflecting a creative frenzy. Musical notes and memoranda, pads and pencils, patterns of various kinds, mixed with slips of paper, half-full Martini glasses, ashtrays, death's heads—then the picture swings around (the coffee cup along with it!) and an ensemble arranged according to musical instrument has been committed to paper. Constant movement, metamorphosis, variation and pleasant uncertainty: a concert hall? A movie theater?
The picture's square remains, becoming in the course of the switch a bright square within the picture: a projection screen with an ensemble in the form of a projection screen in front of the ensemble, which is suddenly no more than a shadow of itself. Madame Press is dead. The imagination lives on. At least that seems to be the case.
Christoph Huber

A meditation on the certainties of being and perceptual illusions, a circling search in time and space, and at the same time a trompe l'oeil; the spatial dimensions of Morton Feldman's steady, apparently timeless music are taken literally in the film: The sketched arrangement of a musical ensemble about to perform Feldman's composition fills with 'real' musicians caught in the paper's two-dimensionality, only to move to the spatiality of the Vienna Konzerthaus. But what is real here, what is a visual fake? Seems To Be dances on this platform of ambivalences, juxtaposing the metaphysics of a solid existential foundation and the agnostic skepticism of an abandonment of being marked by a visual chimera. Godless Feldman, merciless abyss! What we see is looking back at us.

Casting

Morton Feldman, Beat Furrer, Musicians of Klangforum Wien

Crew

DOP: Martin Putz, Eni Brandner
Editor: Frédéric Fichefet
Music: Morton Feldman
Orchestra: Klangforum Wien

Nominations & Awards

Best Short Finalist @ siCORTO International Film Festival, Cochabamba, Bolivia 2010

Arts&film Festival Prague, Czech Republic 2010
Linoleum Festival of Contemporary Animation & Media-Art Moscow, Russia
Retrospective Bady Minck (11.12. - 13.12.2009)
Festival de Cine Internacional de Ourense Spain 2009
Brisbane International Film Festival Australia 2009
Hamburger Ostertöne Hamburg, Germany 2009
Stockholm Festival for Short Experimental Film 2009
BAFF Busto Arsizio Film Festival Italy 2009

MUSEEK Music Video Festival, Sankt-Peterburg, Russia 2008
Istanbul International Short Film Festival Turkey 2008
Tindirindis Int'l Animation Film Festival Vilnius, Lithuania 2008
BalkAnima Int'l Animated Film Festival Beograd, Serbia 2008
JIMFF Jecheon Int'l Music & Film Festival Seoul, South Korea 2008
Cadore Doc Film Festival, Pieve di Cadore, Italy 2008
IO Isabella International Film Week Maratea, Italy 2008
Animator International Film Festival Poznan, Poland 2008
Diagonale Festival of Austrian Film Graz, Austria 2008
Int'l Short & Independent Film Festival Dhaka, Bangladesh 2008
Berlinale Forum Expanded Germany 2008

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