Absurdistan

Veit Helmer: Absurdistan (DE/AZ 2008).

DE / AZ © 2008 Veit Helmer Filmproduktion.
    D: Veit Helmer. SC: Veit Helmer, Zaza Buadze, Gordan Mihic, Ahmet Golbol. DP: Giorgi Beridze – 35 mm – 1:1,85 – print from Babelsberg Kopierwerk. M: Shigeru Umebayashi. LOC: Azerbaidzhan, Georgia.
    Starring Kristyna Malérová (Aya), Max Mauff (Temelko).
    In Russian.
    In the presence of Kristyna Malérová and Max Mauff.
    A Beta Cinema print with English subtitles viewed at Espoo Ciné, Méliès d'Argent series, Tapiolasali, Espoo, 22 August 2008.

This print was oddly bleak, although the the subject would have required at least a normal colour vibrancy or even intensive colour.

Following Timo Kuismin's catalogue text: Veit Helmer returns to Tuvalu's silent film ambience with liberal helpings of magical realism and Kusturica-style dressings. Absurdistan is a fictive no-man's-land somewhere between the new states that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union. There is only one village, whose women start a sex strike because its work-shy lazybones cannot get the only water pipeline repaired. The war of the sexes divides the village into two.

Keywords to the style include naivism, tableau style, and a fuga structure (theme and variations).

Visual humour, rich comical inventions and a funny soundtrack, accented by horn sounds.