Max Mauff And Kristyna MALÉROVÁ In Director Veit Helmer's Absurdistan. Courtesy First Run Features.
German writer-director Veit Helmer is a true oddity, a creative mind whose films might well have been unearthed from a time capsule buried during the era of silent comedy. Born in Hanover in 1968, Helmer spent much of his childhood watching Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd and by the age of 14 had already made his first film. He studied at Munich's School of Television and Film, and made quirky shorts throughout his time there, such as the highly inventive Surprise! (1995). When Wim Wenders, a professor of his, decided to make a film based on one of his students' screenplays, he chose Helmer's submission. The resulting film,...
German writer-director Veit Helmer is a true oddity, a creative mind whose films might well have been unearthed from a time capsule buried during the era of silent comedy. Born in Hanover in 1968, Helmer spent much of his childhood watching Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd and by the age of 14 had already made his first film. He studied at Munich's School of Television and Film, and made quirky shorts throughout his time there, such as the highly inventive Surprise! (1995). When Wim Wenders, a professor of his, decided to make a film based on one of his students' screenplays, he chose Helmer's submission. The resulting film,...
- 2/18/2009
- by Nick Dawson
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
As its theatrical poster infers, Veit Helmer’s third feature Absurdistan (2008) is a buoyant and romantically ebullient fable, tempering the sexual politics of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata with enchanting dollops of magical realism and insouciant humor. Since at least the Soviet perestroika, the term “absurdistan”—according to Wikipedia—has been in use to satirize “a country in which absurdity is the norm, especially in its public authorities and government.”
Eschewing the term’s potential political heft, however, Helmer adopted it to entitle his allegorical comedy centered on two childhood sweethearts—Aya (Kristyna Malérová) and Temelko (Max Mauff)—who seem destined for each other from the moment they’re born. But when a water shortage threatens their village and the lazy indifference of the male villagers angers the women to go on a sex strike until the drought is resolved, Aya and Temelko’s first night of love—predicted by a narrow astrological window—is jeopardized.
Eschewing the term’s potential political heft, however, Helmer adopted it to entitle his allegorical comedy centered on two childhood sweethearts—Aya (Kristyna Malérová) and Temelko (Max Mauff)—who seem destined for each other from the moment they’re born. But when a water shortage threatens their village and the lazy indifference of the male villagers angers the women to go on a sex strike until the drought is resolved, Aya and Temelko’s first night of love—predicted by a narrow astrological window—is jeopardized.
- 2/9/2009
- by Michael Guillen
- Screen Anarchy
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