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Cinema Elvire Popesco -
Friday, December 12, 2014 - 18:00
Cinematography:
Krisztina Kerekes
Editing:
Judith Zdesar, Dominique Gromes
Sound:
Dominique Gromes, Judith Zdesar
Production:
Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, Abteilung Film und Fernsehen
Romanian premiere
DIARY OF SOMEONE WAITING shows the usual non-heroic life of young soldiers guarding the border, preparing for a war that is not coming, waiting to catch immigrants that never appear, bouncing around in the snow like twelve-year boys at camp. With absurd beckettian humor, any sense of authority disappears as the soldiers film one-another. The movie is a generic description of what life itself becomes at one point: a long wait for something to happen. With a keen eye sketching sharp observations, the film explores the soldiers’ true selves, in time of peace, when they have to make up their own minds on who and how to be. (Bianca Bănică, BIEFF)
Director:
JUDITH ZDESAR studied Comparative Literature and German Studies at the University of Vienna, then decided to engage in Scriptwriting and Directing Studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna in the class of Michael Haneke. She published several short fiction stories, but kept her attention on documentary field, taking the M2 Documentaire de création (Studies of Creative Documentary Making) at the University Stendhal in Grenoble, France. She currently lives and works in Vienna where she is developing a career, having shot already three short films well received in festivals around the world.
Contact:
judith.zdesar[at]gmx[dot]at
Festivals, awards:
- IDFA International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam
- Jury Prize for Best Short Film - Diagonale Austrian Film Festival 2007
- Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival 2009
- Istanbul International Short Film Festival 2008
- India International Women Film Festival 2007
- Denver International Film Festival 2007
Director's statement:
I always knew I wanted to show the loneliness of waiting and that I would not be able to show this by being present all the time. That’s why I decided to leave the camera with the soldiers, asking them to do whatever they like, but use the camera as a mean of communication: to show/tell me what it is like to wait. The result was a kaleidoscope of absurdity. Mixed with the intimate stories the men told me, it became a sad synopsis of life: waiting for nothing to happen, trying to do silly stuff to make the time go by. I understood that the absurdity of this mission would not end when the soldiers are allowed to go back to their homes after their service. (Judith Zdesar)
Curator's comment:
A war movie without a war. The only thing that remains is concentrating on one´s own emotional situation. When your existence becomes a kind of service and your superior has lost the authority which gives him meaning, service on the border becomes a borderline case of filmic/linguistic representation. Though these images from DIARY OF SOMEONE WAITING seem strange and foreign, they have more to do with us than we would prefer. Lo-fi science fiction without a future, the soldiers themselves are the aliens, and the enemy looks like your best friend. (Michael Palm)
I always knew I wanted to show the loneliness of waiting and that I would not be able to show this by being present all the time. That’s why I decided to leave the camera with the soldiers, asking them to do whatever they like, but use the camera as a mean of communication: to show/tell me what it is like to wait. The result was a kaleidoscope of absurdity. Mixed with the intimate stories the men told me, it became a sad synopsis of life: waiting for nothing to happen, trying to do silly stuff to make the time go by. I understood that the absurdity of this mission would not end when the soldiers are allowed to go back to their homes after their service. (Judith Zdesar)
Curator's comment:
A war movie without a war. The only thing that remains is concentrating on one´s own emotional situation. When your existence becomes a kind of service and your superior has lost the authority which gives him meaning, service on the border becomes a borderline case of filmic/linguistic representation. Though these images from DIARY OF SOMEONE WAITING seem strange and foreign, they have more to do with us than we would prefer. Lo-fi science fiction without a future, the soldiers themselves are the aliens, and the enemy looks like your best friend. (Michael Palm)