The trip to Kafiristan
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The trip to Kafiristan |
| Country of production |
Germany Switzerland Netherlands |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2001 |
| length | 105 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Donatello Dubini Fosco Dubini |
| script |
Donatello Dubini Fosco Dubini Barbara Marx |
| production |
Donatello Dubini Fosco Dubini Cardo Dubini Gerard Huisman |
| music |
Wolfgang Hamm Madredeus Jan Garbarek / Ustad Fateh Ali Khan |
| camera | Matthias Kälin |
| cut | Christel Maye |
| occupation | |
| |
The Journey to Kafiristan is a German film by the brothers Donatello and Fosco Dubini from 2001.
It is based on two travel diaries: On an adventurous journey through Iran and Afghanistan by Ella Maillart and All Paths Are Open. The trip to Afghanistan by Annemarie Schwarzenbach .
action
1939. Annemarie Schwarzenbach and Ella Maillart travel by car to Afghanistan , more precisely: to a small, inaccessible valley called Kafiristan . Both have different motivations. Schwarzenbach, a Swiss writer, is a lesbian, addicted to morphine and repeatedly experiences severe depressive phases. She wants to flee from the political and human destruction of Europe , but also to escape her own problems.
Ella Maillart, also Swiss, is an athlete, photographer, ethnologist and confused by the influences of Nazi Germany. On the one hand, she tries to find herself in the wasteland of the desert and, on the other hand, to research the culture of nomadic peoples .
During the long car trips in the loneliness of the landscape, the two get closer and ultimately they love each other.
background
The writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach grew up in a wealthy industrial family in Zurich. Highly intelligent, she received her doctorate at the age of 23, and while still studying, she published her first literary and journalistic works. The film The Journey to Kafiristan is based on her recordings of that journey.
The young woman, who attracted both sexes equally with her androgynous appearance, led the life of an intellectual, surrounded herself with German, Swiss and Jewish scholars, which was not without danger in her time. Despite her addiction to morphine, she remained loyal to writing.
After several suicide attempts, Annemarie Schwarzenbach finally died in 1942 as a result of a bicycle accident. The love between her and Ella Maillart was never lived.
Reviews
"Even if the Dubinis' work is likely to close itself off to a broad audience because of its lengthy staging style, the partially cerebral dialogues and the off-screen monologues as well as the seemingly desolate locations, this cinematic travel diary offers some remarkable highlights."
“ The trip to Kafiristan is essentially a kind of cinematic standstill. You are not only not smarter afterwards than before. The film basically says about the two women played: nothing. Instead, he speaks for (or better against) the artificial and mannerist way in which the German-speaking world sometimes realizes a cinema of concern and sensitivity: horrible. The deliberate, forced way of impressing the audience of such films with “the truth” about “the emotional world” of two people has nothing of real closeness. Proximity is not produced here, only simulated. "
Web links
- The trip to Kafiristan in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Fosco Dubini: On the making of a film about Annemarie Schwarzenbach . In: Walter Fähnders, Sabine Rohlf (ed.): Annemarie Schwarzenbach. Analysis and first prints . Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld, 2008, pp. 187–196.
- ↑ First edition 1948, also published under the title refugee idyl (1988, 1995) as well as The bitter way - with Annemarie Schwarzenbach on the way to Afghanistan , 2001
- ↑ Posthumously published by Lenos Verlag, Basel, 2000.
- ↑ kino.de
- ↑ follow-me-now.de