Schnapps in the kettle

Movie
Original title	Schnapps in the kettle
Country of production	Germany
original language	Ostfriesisches Platt , German
Publishing year	1991
length	79 minutes
Age rating	FSK 0
Rod
Director	Hans-Erich Viet
script	Hans-Erich Viet
production	Hans-Erich Viet
camera	Peter van den Reek
cut	Petra Heymann

Schnaps im Wasserkessel (alternative title: Schnaps im Wasserkessel and other stories ) is a German documentary film by director Hans-Erich Viet from 1991. The film was Viet's thesis at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin and in 1992 Viet became Adolf -Grimme Prize awarded.

content

In 1950, a documentary was shot in the East Frisian Rheiderland about farm workers bringing in the harvest. In the old documentary recordings, the workers thrashed rapeseed using a long outdated method and were then rewarded with schnapps and raisin bread. Based on this old amateur film , of which excerpts are also used for schnapps in the kettle , forty years later Hans Erich Viet goes on the search for traces of the living and working conditions of the former farm workers in his home in the Rhineland. In doing so, the director discovers familiar things, pursues his own motifs that drove him away from the Rheiderland in the early 1960s and leaves the farm workers, farmers, maids , schnapps and brick makers , hunters and VW workers mostly in the Rheiderland Platt , that too the director himself still speaks, telling of their life and their work.

background

The film was produced by Hans Erich Viets in Bunde and Berlin- based film production company VIET-Filmproduktion on behalf of ZDF and shot in winter. "I wanted the autumn mood and desaturated colors, which I found aesthetically better," said Hans Erich Viet, explaining the shooting period. Hans Erich Viet also finished his studies at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB) with schnapps in a kettle .

Reviews

“In very personal encounters with the country and its people and their stories, an extremely lively social study of the region comes together. A careful cinematic approach, unpretentious and modest like the lovable originals "themselves - the last representatives of an intact community that is subject to an inexorable process of change." "

- Lexicon of international film

“The documentary is so fascinating precisely because Viet lets the people in the film be who they are. If it takes a little longer for the old farm worker to pick up the harmonica to play “It's best in East Friesland”, then that's the way it is. The time is not artificially shortened by cuts. The actors' often monosyllabic answers stay that way. "

- District newspaper

"An old lady plays the harmonica" It's best in East Friesland "; a drunk cycle into a moat: earthy, rustic humor pervades Hans-Erich Viet's documentary about the forgotten world of the Frisian farm workers. Machines have long been doing their hard job. Viet shows excerpts from a 1950s amateur film about traditional rapeseed threshing and lets the former participants, now very old, tell their stories on Platt! It's not exciting, but touchingly honest and wistful-funny. "

- TV movie

“Schnaps in the Kettle” is a social study about the country and people in Viet's East Frisian homeland. The film, which was awarded the Adolf Grimme Prize, is similar to the "objects" portrayed by it: rather taciturn, brittle and initially seeming a bit inaccessible, but with qualities that reveal themselves on closer inspection. "

- zitty