Elephy-Program 2
Hit Him on the Head with a Hard, Heavy Hammer Rebecca Jane Arthur; Music: Paul Abbott. BE/GB, 2023, DCP (from 16mm), color and b/w, 49 min. EnglishJumping Hochhäuser Tomash Schoiswohl; Cinematography: Georg Oberlechner. AT, 2022, DCP, color, 16 min. German with English subtitles
The sound of crashing clangs resonates through these two films: the discordant blows of history and memory, of destruction and displacement, of capitalism and its contradictions. Rebecca Jane Arthur's Hit Him on the Head with a Hard, Heavy Hammer departs from the handwritten memoir of the filmmaker's father and his experience of displacement during wartime. Referring to the notion Thomas Hardy termed "The Self-Unseeing" in his eponymous 1901 poem, the film returns to childhood and the matters that harden us: upbringing, social status, education, labor, and familial bonds. Tomash Schoiswohl's Jumping Hochhäuser is a performative critique of the changing nature of city housing that perturbates Vienna, where social housing complexes make way for one luxury residential building after another. Two films infused with a desire for a radically different way of living, clanging for an explosive force that is greater than a hundred wrecking balls. (S.D.)
Film talk with Rebecca Jane Arthur and Tomash Schoiswohl
Screening dates:
