Angela Schanelec: Captivating Contemplation
Angela Schanelec is probably the most peculiar member of the Berlin School, a movement begun by several students from the DFFB (German Film and Television Academy Berlin) who got together to share thoughts and ideas about how to pull German cinema out of the stultifying rut dug by the big commercial film productions of the 1990s.
Angela Schanelec’s films are characterised by their radical formal exploration of everything that happens on and off camera and by a mise en scène that leaves no room for improvisation yet contrasts with what is shown. Contemplation of the ordinary and seemingly trivial has never been so aesthetic, so existential. Schanelec is not interested in telling epic tales, but she puts her audiences against the ropes. In her films, words are used sparingly, and images are a captivating delight. A park, a house, a hand, a gesture or a gaze tell us everything we need to know in order to enter a mysterious, sophisticated world.
Schanelec invites us to contemplate calm, nature, restraint, tension, emotions and coldness, refinement and aridity with eyes that reject narrative and chronological linearity, using protracted long takes that give events plenty of room to unfold. Meditation on the self and on being in the world and with other beings is a constant exploration in her films, and that meditative approach is what ties all the productions featured in this cycle together.
The cycle examines the evolution from her early days as a film school student in Berlin, where she took the first steps towards developing her singular vision, to her latest works. Every film in this cycle features characters (mostly women) who lead seemingly ordinary lives until something completely unexpected happens. Introspection, frailty that becomes fortitude, unbearable loneliness, desperate, heart-rending searching and outbursts of repressed emotions are constants in these films.
Born in Aalen, Germany, in 1962, Angela Schanelec initially studied to be an actress in Frankfurt-am-Main, appearing at Hamburg’s Thalia Theatre and Berlin’s Schaubühne. This early experience on the stage is important for understanding her subsequent career as a film director, and especially her unique concept of space and naturalism applied to performances. She later studied Filmmaking at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin. She is currently a professor of Narrative Cinema at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts.
Text by Eloisa Suárez
