Josephine Ahnelt, AUT 2013

13min / b&w / no sound / Originalformat: super8 / Projectionformats: 16mm Blow Up, HD-Digital
Realised with Funding by stadt wien & bmukk
Distributed by sixpack film

..a film that captures the glances of innocence – sensitive and with a lot of spontaneity.
Honorary Mention by the Innovative Cinema Jury, Diagonale – Festival for Austrian Film 2014

..In poetic imagery, reserved and powerfully expressiv the camera approaches
the Emotions and and Surroundings of it’s Protagonists.
Honorary Mention by the International Jury, YOUKI – Youth Media Festival 2014

Screening Selection
30.5.2015 VIS Festival - CinemaSessions: Philipp Quehenberger x Josephine Ahnelt, Vienna, Austria
18.11.2014 YOUKI, Wels – International Competition, Austria
14.11.2014 Cork Film Festival, Cork Irland
10.9.2014 Eunic, Sweden
19.3.2014 Diagonale, Graz, Austria
21.11.2013 TIE Festival, Colorado Springs, USA
13.11.2013 Denver Filmfestival, USA
13.11.2013 Kasseler Dokfest, Germany

Catalogtext sixpackfilm:
The poetry of Water from Grain grows out of an apparent contradiction
steming from its seeming timelessness while it plays out
on the clearly recognizable outskirts of Vienna in the years of 2011 and 2012.

Josephine Ahnelt accompanies two youths, a boy and a girl, with her Super-8 camera.
Her main interest is focused upon the woman, her subtle beauty and her shapely form.
Black and white and silent, the film focuses upon the visual impact of fleeting moments
employing lighting, facial expression and gesture
rather than dialogue to conjure its atmosphere.

The footage was hand processed and is hence blemished,
the resulting impurities obscuring and transcending certain scenes.

The first chapter unfolds at an airport.
There where the longing for far away places and the other provides the stuff of fantasy
the protagonists lean against the railing of a parking garage and gaze downwards,
they pursue each other in a game of catch
and the young woman poses in the shadow play of the concrete desert.

She seems older than the young man, more thoughtful and closer to adulthood.
Both seem to use this anonymous place of transit
as a location for their freedom and curiosity, as a space for unsupervised movement.

In the meantime, three other young people
take happy and affectionate leave of a fourth person.
They are older and have reason to be at the airport.

The third chapter of the film also takes place in a public space,
a small park that serves as a good meeting place for the two youths and their friends.
Their physical enactment of tussling and necking
are expressions of boredom as well as a youthful discovery of sensuality.

Where does the trip of life lead?
As viewers we know nothing about the protagonists,
everything is a matter of projection and guessing:
But it is precisely in this indirect, lyrical, documentary-like form
that a voyeuristic enthusiasm for stories beyond pure representation finds nourishment.
( sixpackfilm Text by Brigitta Burger-Utzer )