Strom - Versuche im Dunklen
79 Min
D 2015, Original mit Engl. Untertiteln
Verleih arsenal distribution
mit Laurence Grave, Karl Heil, Margit Liebl, Tim Kartmann, Dirk Reheis, u.a.
Regie Eva C. Heldmann
Textbearbeitung Interviews Bärbel Freund
Kamera Ulrike Pfeiffer
Ton Ulla Kösterke
Schnitt Dörte Völz-Mammarella
Musik Eunice Martins, Olaf Boquist
Sound Design Frank Behnke
Electricity
The film interviews five people who cannot pay their electricity bills. They live below the poverty line without light and heat, in or near large cities. Berlin based artist Laurence Grave acts a composite rôle, representing aspects of the other people. She sees, hears and touches in her forsaken apartment, and feels limited and excluded. At the same time she is extra-sensitive to the passage of light, day and night, through her windows. A long indoor twilight persists between the bright sunlight and the night car lights that both shine onto her walls making 'cinema'. The sounds that creep into the apartment are just alien to her.
The interviewed people read their responses for the camera. (This technique relaxes the original interview and also gives the people some interpretative distance from themselves.) They speak of how they lost work, then electricity, then hope, and finally found clever solutions to their precarious situations.
In the end the actress rises from her dark world to dizzy heights, flashing with her own electricity, remaking the rules of the game. "Elektra" triumphs!
A film about light and darkness, noise and silence, belonging and being excluded, reality and show/chaos.