Step across the Border (1990)
a ninety-minute celluloid improvisation
"In Step Across the Border, two forms of artistic expression - improvised music and direct cinema - are interrelated. In both forms it is the moment that counts, the intuitive sense for what is happening in a space. Music and film come into existence out of an intense perception of the moment, not from the transformation of a preordained plan. The other connection concerns the work method: the film team as band. Much as musicians communicate via the music, our work, too, was realized within a very small and flexible team of equals. What mattered was exchange. And movement. Sometimes we started filming in the middle of the night, responding to a new idea that had arisen only minutes before. We had a fundamental feeling for what we wanted to do, for what kind of film this should be. And we followed that feeling. It was all very instinctive."
(Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel)
Musicians: Fred Frith, Joey Baron, Ciro Battista, Iva Bittová, Tom Cora, Jean Derome, Pavel Fajt, Eitetsu Hayashi, Tim Hodgkinson, Arto Lindsay, René Lussier, Haco Kevin Norton, Bob Ostertag, Zeena Parkins, Lawrence Wright, John Zorn
Staring: Robert Frank, Julia Judge, Jonas Mekas, Ted Milton, John Spacely, Yasushi Utsonomiya, Tom Walker
Photos
Middle of the Moment (1995)
an eighty-minute poetic voyage
Five years after STEP ACROSS THE BORDER, a new work by cinenomad-Nopmadenkino. For more than two years the two directors were on the road with the acrobats of the French CIRQUE O, with Tuareg nomads in the mountains of the southern Sahara, and with the American poet, clown and philosopher Robert Lax. From the large collection of sound and visual material they recorded in the course of their travels, the two film makers have created a work they call a "cinepoem".
"Our journeys were not merely an attempt to comprehend traditional and new forms of nomadic life. They were also a search for the poetic vocabulary of cinema, with all the scope for improvisation.
We called it MIDDLE OF THE MOMENT, perhaps because that is what we find so attractive about an itinerant way of life: a sensibility for the essence of each moment, being in a different place in the batting of an eyelid, between arrival and departure, always moving on into the open....
We found a grave without a name in the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris. As an inscription, it bore a single sentence, which for us has become a leitmotif that runs through the entire film and describes the great voyage on which we all find ourselves:They marvelled at the beauty of the voyage that took them to the end of their life."
(Nicolas Humbert a Werner Penzel)
Starring: Cirque O, Saharan nomads, language poet Robert Lax, and a newborn camel
Music: Fred Frith
Photos
The film screenings will be presented with the filmmakers in attendance. Nicolas Humbert (Switzerland) and Werner Penzel (Germany) with their joint and individual film projects have enriched world cinematography significantly. Together they have also shot the documentary film "Lani und die Seinen" (1998/1999) and the videoproject "Three Windows" (1999), and they have also founded the independent film distributing team Der Andere Blick (1986) and the production company CineNomad (1987).
Project Three Windows - Hommage a Robert Lax is installed at the Galerie Rudolfinum from 4. 10. to 25. 11. 2001
Co-Production: Archa Theatre, Galerie Rudolfinum, Goethe Institut, Pro Helvetia
