Project Type: Experimental, Music Video, Short
Runtime: 8 minutes 14 seconds
Completion Date: April 28, 2023
Production Budget: 1,000 USD
Country of Origin: Switzerland
Country of Filming: Switzerland
Language: English
Shooting Format: Canon M510
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Film Color: Color
WRITTEN, DIRECTED AND EDITED BY :
RADU ZERO
WITH :
MICHELLE SUTER & BARBARA PATERNOSTE
ASIAN WEAPONS EXPERT - WIDO DE-MARVAL
MUSIC BY :
BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE
CHRISTOPH CLÖSER - SAXOPHONES, FENDER RHODES, PIANO, VIBRAPHONE, DRUMS
MORTEN GASS - ORGAN, MELLOTRON, PIANO, MOOG, GUITAR,
ROBIN RODENBERG - BASS, DOUBLE BASS, DRUMS
« Sag Mir, Wie Lang » FROM THE ALBUM « PATCHOULI BLUE »
WRITTEN BY:
CHRISTOPH CLÖSER & MORTEN GASS
MIXED AND MASTERED BY :
ANDI REISNER
RELEASED BY :
PIAS RECORDINGS
PRODUCED BY :
ZEROSTOCFILM - RADU ZERO - BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE
ZEROSTOCFILM 2023
SYNOPSIS :
Night. Crossing the deserted streets of the city, a young woman goes to a secret meeting place. Once inside, the space quickly seems to become a trap closing in on her, and of which the film itself as well as its ghostly images would be the key. "
INTENTIONS :
Using the filmic codes of the "Giallo" (Italian genre), SAG MIR, WIE LANG must be apprehended by the spectator in the form of an optical and sensory investigation.
I constructed the film SAG MIR, WIE LANG in the manner of a cinematic trap. As a viewer, you can get caught up in it at several key points, get lost in it, escape from it. The story itself is a double-sided distorting mirror. Each image here, specular, finds its own reflection in another, in a memory of the cinema, in a sound, or in the ghost of a missing image.
SAG MIR, WIE LANG is a film that tests the limits of fiction and its cinematic representations. A film about the persistence of certain images, their memory, their ghosts. A film about what we think we see.
The configuration of the "territory" within which SAG MIR, WIE LANG takes place appears to be closed in on itself: its dynamics, its capacity to evolve, to transform itself is found within the film and is delimited by the strict space of what we see and hear.
Hence, the real answers lie in what is missing from this configuration: the editing, while giving the initial illusion of relative fluidity, is in reality truncated and lacunar. Strictly incomplete, since segments (shots, even sequences) are obviously missing from the narrative.
Paradoxically, this same montage becomes increasingly elliptical when we focus on the repetition of certain situations and images.
In short, here, each image that we discover is likely to announce its future reflection!
In this perspective, that is to say literally in this form of depth that the gigogne montage proposes, the narrative of SAG MIR, WIE LANG is to be found in the out-of-fields that link these situations to their reflections. The reflections contain the world, since they confirm by their presence that there is a fact, an object that produced them.
INFLUENCES :
The birth of SAG MIR, WIE LANG is linked to an intimate collaboration with the legendary dark jazz group Bohren & Der Club of Gore.
This secretive yet hugely influential group has transformed the way we listen to music over the last two decades, in the same way that certain film-makers have changed the way we perceive images in the collective unconscious. For me, Bohren & Der Club of Gore are a perfectly cinematic band. And their sounds systematically refer to film references.
My initial intention was to take the listener on a journey through their music for the first time, so as to subtly lose them in the spectrum of these references.
Hence the spectre of certain genre filmmakers hovering permanently over SAG MIR, WIE LANG, like ghosts in the film. In turn, I think we can recognise direct links with the 'Giallo' system and its exponents, Dario Argento and Luci Fulci in particular ( in the undecidable character that stands out in each shot ), as well as the erratic, untied, nocturnal patina of a David Lynch, the wanderings of a Jeanne Moreau in Louis Malle's 'Ascenseur pour l'échaffaud', or the principle of broken, simultaneous temporality in Brian De Palma's aesthetic.
TRAILER :