Josephine Ahnelt, AUT 2011

2.38min / b&w / no sound
Originalformat: super8
Projectionformats: 35mm & 16mm Blow-Up & HD-Digital
Distributed by sixpack film

This film expresses the visual mystery of what at first might seem to be found footage of teenagers playing in an anonymous courtyard. At the modest 2.5 minute length of an 8mm camera roll, Tic Tac captures images pregnant with fragility and multiple meaning.
58th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen
Special Mention by The International Jury

sixpackfilm Catolgtext:
Tic Tac is a zigzagging parkour move in which the runner pushes off from a surface to jump over obstacles or climb tight spaces between buildings. However, not much of the eponymous technique can be seen
in young filmmaker Josephine Ahnelt’s work: The movement takes place in the protagonists’ faces.

Tic Tac examines in microscopic detail the psychological processes that play out while a group of young parkour traceurs do their thing. The camera focuses on their facial expressions and gestures, their anxiety and nervousness, and also their pleasure and pain.

Ahnelt, a former pupil of Friedl Kubelka, works with a representational process in which the internal field of tension is reflected in the external field of tension and the ledges and concrete slabs that must be surmounted.

The former entails the testing of one’s own competitive ability and performance and how they are put to use. The film also reflects in this intermediate space on the representational process’ social aspects: The activity itself, which is meant to be observed, is left out, and instead the gaze is directed at this more or less enthusiastic desire.

The scratches on the grainy Super 8 film stock evoke vague memories of a time filled with friction. The film’s visual grammar combines with reminiscences of a transitional phase for which terms such as “coming of age” are employed to describe dramatic structure in film. The absence of sound underlines the impression of distance. Ahnelt’s black-and-white work is a timeless description of a state of being.

In the shooting process, the film, which was edited in the camera, also reflects the fleeting nature and unpredictability of the states it portrays.
( sixpackfilm Text by Angelika Unterholzner )

Screenings Selection

30.May 2015 CinemaSessionsLive: Philipp Quehenberger x Josephine Ahnelt, VIS, Vienna
20.November 2013 TIE Festival
16.November 2013 Kasseler Dokfest
26.-29.6.2013 Videoinstallation at the mumok
24.5.2013 Friday Exit, Vienna
20. & 21.4.2013 Bradford International Film Festival
27.1.2013 IFFR – DINAMO P&I Screening 3
16.1.2013 Schmallfilm Screening by sixpack film
14.11.2012 Ozu Filmfestival – Doc Competition
7.11.2012 Doxs! – Duisburger Filmwoche 36
18.10.2012 Hangzhou Asian Film Festival, HAFF
20. & 21.9.2012 Belo Horizonte International Short Film Festival
15.9.2012 Graphinale – Shortfilmfestival by the Graphische Mediaschool Vienna
1.5.2012 Int. Short Film Festival Oberhausen – International Competition
26.-28.4.2012 Int. Short Film Festival Oberhausen – Children’s & Youth Cinema
25.10.2011 Viennale – Luminous Film Frames