Attenberg (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Attenberg |
| Country of production | Greece |
| original language | Greek |
| Publishing year | 2010 |
| length | 95 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Athina Rachel Tsangari |
| script | Athina Rachel Tsangari |
| production | Maria Chatzakou, Giorgos Lanthimos , Iraklis Mavroidis, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Chaos Film |
| camera | Thymios Bakatakis |
| cut | Sandrine Cheyrol, Matt Johnson |
| occupation | |
| |
Attenberg is a feature film and the second feature film by the Greek director Athina Rachel Tsangari .
The film was produced and shot in Greece and categorized as Greek New Wave by the press . The director Giorgos Lanthimos worked as a co-producer and actor .
action
Marina is 23 and lives with her father in an interchangeable industrial village on the coast. She works as a chauffeur in the neighboring factory. Marina finds the human species strange, almost daunting, were it not for Bella, her only and very unconventional friend, and her sick father Spyros. She lives with him and with him she engages in bizarre dialogues. Marina keeps her distance from other people and observes them through the songs of the no-wave band Suicide and through the animal documentaries by David Attenborough , which represent key aspects of the film's narrative.
In the course of the film, the seemingly asexual Marina actively and curiously approaches the engineer, whom she chauffeurs as part of her work and with whom she shares a preference for suicide and table football. The development of Marina's desires happens in a very idiosyncratic way and according to her rhythm. She opens up more and more emotionally. Attenberg shows the self-confident development of female desire beyond the categories of “ heterosexual ” or “ homosexual ”. Within the friendship between Bella and Marina, a physicality and a repertoire of behavior is shown that leave the usual film clichés and the categories of " friendship " and " sexuality " far behind. Bella tries e.g. B. To give Marina access to her sexuality by teaching her the French kiss or letting Marina touch her breasts while they have a conversation about Marina's admiration for female breasts. Marina's sex partner remains relatively passive and nameless in the film, his masculinity is free from machismo , he acts consensually . With Attenberg , Tsangari formulates a concept that is critical of the two-way relationship: “When I thought through the story more closely, I noticed that two people who really want to get closer always need an imaginary third party, someone who acts as a catalyst or as an opponent acts and makes the relationship stronger or justifies it at all. For me that means that there is actually no two-way relationship but only three-way relationships. "
At the same time, her father's illness developed into his death. Shortly before the death of Marina's father, she persuades her sexually rather active friend Bella to sleep with him as a parting present. He was the architect and urban planner of the settlement in which the protagonists live. Spyros is preparing for his self-determined "exit" from life. He describes the twentieth century as overrated and the settlement he planned and now almost deserted as a mathematically constructed ruin. He thereby formulates a criticism of the rapid industrialization of this area from a sheep pasture to an industrial city.
Using her friend Bella and the two men, Marina investigates the final mysteries of the human fauna. Watching animal documentaries and imitating animals together play a major role. After the death of her father, Marina and Bella scatter his ashes over the sea. She is now independent.
background
Tsangari includes other creative forms of expression in her film, such as architecture, dance or performance, documentary film and theater. She quotes the film, the Greek tragedy with the thematic link between sex and death, and with the dance routines (Interludes) and silly programs ( silly walks ) of the protagonists in the deserted factory town as so-called choir. At the same time, these elements express the animality of the characters Bella and Marina in a non-verbal way, their freak or otherness. The actresses Ariane Labed and Evangelia Randou are both also dancers and performers. The silly corridors also refer to The Ministry of Silly Corridors by the artist group Monty Python .
Scene of Attenberg the workers city is Aspra Spitia (dt. White houses ) in Viotia . It was designed entirely on the drawing board from 1961 by Konstantinos Apostolos Doxiadis , a modern urban planner in the tradition of Le Corbusier , and thus represents an ideal modern city . It was built by the company Aluminum of Greece until 1965 for its employees who worked up to today operates an aluminum mine in the immediate vicinity . The city's 1,100 houses, which Doxiadis fitted harmoniously into the scenic Antikyra Bay, were largely abandoned at the time the film was shot. Due to the automation of the production processes, Aluminum of Greece only had 500 employees in 2010 instead of the original 4000. The director lived in Aspra Spitia for several years during her childhood because her father worked there.
The film title refers to the animal filmmaker David Attenborough , whose animal films appear as film quotes in Attenberg . For Tsangaris, Attenborough's documentaries are masterpieces of cinema. For Attenberg the crew analyzed his films in order to develop intensely played scenes with imitations of the movements of cats, albatrosses, gorillas and fish.
Attenberg as a film of the Greek New Wave (or Greek Weird Wave ) was produced as a collective without public funding in the apartments and with the equipment of the producers. This allowed it to be created directly according to the director's ideas and free of funding guidelines or requirements in terms of content - similar to independent or mumblecore films in the USA and elsewhere. According to Tsangari, there is no film culture with film schools and film funding in Greece. The Greek New Wave is run by people who studied or lived outside of Greece .
Tsangari wrote the script during the Athens riots in December 2008 on the occasion of the killing of the youth Alexandros Grigoropoulos by two police officers in which she and her friends participated. At that time she had no intention of making a film about the state of affairs in Greece. Nevertheless, their anger and the feeling of being betrayed entered the figure of the father Spyros, who reflects the bitterness and cynicism of many Greeks of that time. "The 20th century is overrated." With this sentence the director speaks through one of her characters and criticizes the stuck in capitalism despite the revolutions and the civil wars of the 1960s and 1970s in Greece.
The dream about a penis tree told by Bella in the film was actually dreamed by the producer of the film and thus found its way into the script.
In Attenberg it is discussed that the cremation of the deceased is prohibited as a form of burial in Greece because the Greek Orthodox Church does not allow it. As an atheist, the protagonist Spyros wishes that his dead body should not be eaten away by worms after his burial. He wants his ashes to be scattered over the sea after a cremation that is only possible abroad. Because of this theming in the film, there were discussions and a proposal for a draft law in parliament.
Soundtrack
The music in the film has an important narrative function and comes mainly from the New York no-wave band Suicide and from Françoise Hardy , which the director consciously chose as non- hip music in 2010 to underline the outsider existence of the character Marina. The protagonists Bella and Marina intone in the film Hardy's Yéyé piece Tous les garçons et les filles from 1962. Suicide songs that appear in the film are Ghost Rider , Bebop Kid , Surrender , Jukebox Baby , other musicians involved in the soundtrack are Daniel Johnston , Jacques Dutronc , JJ Johnson and Marilena Orfanou .
reception
"(The film) grew on us the most, and showed another Greece."
"(The film) grew dear to us and showed a different Greece."
Awards
Leading actress Ariane Labed was awarded the Coppa Volpi for best actress at the 67th Venice International Film Festival 2010 .
Web links
- Website for the film
- Attenberg in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Homepage of the Austrian rental company
- Arte online contribution
- Aspra Spitia on the website of the Doxiadis architecture firm (PDF; 181 kB)
swell
- ↑ a b c "Attenberg" by Athina Tsangari. Article ( Memento of the original from September 13, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Arte, September 9, 2010
- ↑ Synopsis by Attenberg on the film's website ( memento of the original from December 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b Cath Clarked: First sight: Ariane Labed . In: The Guardian, August 18, 2011
- ↑ Christoph Huber and Olaf Möller: Athina Rachel Tsangari: “Just don't take it so seriously!”, Interview , in: Die Presse, January 8, 2011
- ↑ a b c d e Denis Demmerle: Athina Rachel Tsangari on her film "Attenberg" . In: Berlin Film Festival, May 8, 2012
- ↑ the city of Aspra Spitia on the website of the architecture office Doxiadis ( memento of the original from October 13, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 181 kB)
- ↑ a b Steve Rose: Attenberg, Dogtooth and the weird wave of Greek cinema . In: The Guardian, August 27, 2011
- ↑ a b c Kira Taszman: Attenberg - Interview with Athina Rachel Tsangari . In: negative. May 14, 2012
- ↑ Soundtrack on the film's website ( memento of the original from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
