The Ghost of Happiness (Extract)
20.12.20112011, ca. 11′, HD / actors: Desirée Meiser und Klaus Brömmelmeier, director, editing, sound: Max Philipp Schmid, camera: Sarah Derendinger, light: André Pinkus, Sarah Derendinger, set design, costume design: Monika Görner-Vogt, sounddesign: Knut Jensen, producer: Stella Händler
A man and a woman in a big embrace. The TV shows a couple dancing in a Hollywood musical. The man and woman attempt to follow suit, but their movements are wooden and their feet leaden, as if under extra gravitational pull. Caught in a web of stereotypes they try again and again, but their perseverance completely robs their dance of the lightness of the original. All that remains is the melancholy cast of failure on their exhausted faces.
The tempting, the deceiving, the fleeting and the oppression of happiness eerily transformed into a theatrical work which cleverly and skilfully applies the language of film and its technology.
A wordless, forceful film with a carefully arranged soundtrack – a miniature work of art
Laudatio for the Basel Film Prize 2011
Text by Chantal Mollheur (Whiteframe) for the exhibition “Frenetic Stillstand”.