wegzaubern
(Spirit Away) Germany 2016, Exp., 7 min., OV/d
Director: Betina Kuntzsch
«Spirit Away» evolved from my interest in the biographies of psychiatric patients, whose creative works are represented in the Prinzhorn Collection. I am impressed by the way that those women attempted to validate themselves by means of art in a situation of existential adversity. The film utilizes 36 original 35mm animated film loops for laterna magica from the period around 1900 – i.e. drawn, often also rotoscoped films dating from the artists’ lifetime. I collected the film loops and scanned them into my computer, image by image, over recent years. From this material I selected everyday scenes with women – often amusing situations with dancers, sorceresses or washerwomen, for example. Then I reconstruct a fictive biography from the animated film scenes and a collage of text fragments from the patients’ records.