"..the Dada movement consisted of artists who rejected the logic, reason, and aestheticism of modern capitalist society, instead expressing nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois protest in their works. The art of the movement spanned visual, literary, and sound media, including collage, sound poetry, cut-up writing, and sculpture....
From the outset, the filmmaker behind "DADA on Vacation" - Errkaa should be applauded, he has an incredible style and a keen aesthetic eye in the art of the experimental and furthermore his choice of music was beautifully chosen to match the visuals. This short film is created in such a way that it is a very clever narrative of a repeating story but with a very interesting twist at the end which I have labelled "change & destruction" which perfectly fits Errkaa's vision.
The essence of the story is the early relationship of Hugo Ball & his future wife Emmy Hennings who between them were essentially the founders of the Dada movement in European art in Zürich during the period of the 1st World War but with a modern interpretation. In particular, Sina Schuldt who plays Emmy is utterly captivating and although there is very little dialogue (only two spoken words in the whole film) I yearned to know what she was likely to say to Hugo (played by Errkaa) throughout this film. This film is not simple to interpret; being abstract, ambiguous, or both but as with any good art - which this film definitely is - it's left to the viewer to deconstruct in a way that they believe is an interpretation of the story. I have my own opinion which begins with an opening shot that shows Emmy being ushered into what may be a nightclub. The dance sequence was exotic or maybe erotic or both, but the very clever part is how this sequence is repeated later on in the film but with a completely different piece of background music. This was a wonderful example of how a scene can be radically interpreted just by changing the audio, stunning. This short film was arresting, hypnotic, and I suspect for the filmmaker a passion project that is deeply personal. As you watch the film, you may imagine yourself in the back seat of a car, your mind wandering to real or imagined moments or simply mesmerised by the textures, light, reflections, and look of the film with your mind constantly adrift.
For me "DADA on Vacation" felt like a voyage through time, questioning the value of the past, of old buildings and such like and inevitably of history itself which again became apparent in the final few minutes compared to an earlier sequence which I would refer to as "The Segways". For me an undercurrent of nostalgia lies within this film but throughout I found Errkaa's storytelling & film-making style to be utterly fascinating."
