WHY FILM?
Language and images | The inner, and the outer channelled towards the inner | To be sorted within | Washed cooked and served | Channelled towards the outer | In the beginning was the word | Heard | Spoken | Language and thought | The reading of images | The writing of images | Film.
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WHY FILM REAKTOR?
The essence of being as a reactor for being | Film as a sparkler for the synapses | The filmmaker as a host to notional creatures | inside a glass | on screen | It smells of blood and biscuits | The film as oasis of infinite finiteness in the now | A face becomes a countenance| inside a glass | inside the reactor | the Film REAKTOR.
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The Film REAKTOR is Bernhard Kammel’s vehicle of choice for producing his films.
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CONTACT
FILM REAKTOR
Geblergasse 40
1170 Wien
Austria
FILM REAKTOR
Geblergasse 40
1170 Wien
Austria
+43 1 3501043
Home
ELYSIUM HERNALSIENSE
Drama | AT 2017 | English | 76 min | colour 1:2.35 | Dolby AtmosLove and Death take strange turns in Vienna,
especially when there’s more involved than a loving wife and cryo-tech.
A man in a
permanent vegetative state is lying at the ‘Hernals Hospital of Eternal Life’ (formerly known as Etablissement Gschwandner, soon to reopen as REAKTOR, Geblergasse,
Vienna’s 17th District), reliving in his dreams the events that led
to his hospitalisation. His wife certainly had a hand in it. A few years back
she disappeared from his life without trace, without explanation. Shortly
before he was admitted to hospital she reappeared at his medical practice, accompanied
by a child he wished was his own.
In his waking dreams, realities and memories of his hopes and dreams blend with dreams of realities without hopes.
As his condition deteriorates, his mother arranges to have him cryogenically frozen at the Cryonics Department (which, conveniently, adjoins the hospital).
However, his ex-wife has summoned a priest to conduct the sacrament of extreme unction. While a farewell ceremony is underway, she improvises a blood transfusion, giving her blood to the man.
While the priest is dispensing the last rites to the wrong body in the dissecting room next door, the woman bleeds to death in the operating theatre; but then the man awakes from his coma.
The man’s mother rejoices at the fact that her daughter-in-law is dead, someone she always rejected as inadequate. Later, with her son and her grandson, she goes to Vienna’s Prater amusement park, where the story first began.
But then…
Director’s Statement
“How does one justify the telling (in English) of a
modern saga about dying in Vienna, featuring a somewhat nonchalant Grim Reaper
in an invisible leading role? At first glance the endeavour seems grotesque
enough, particularly when undertaken by a non-native speaker such as myself –
and I am someone who, in all other respects, valiantly seeks to defend the
English language from its maltreatment as a lingua franca in global usage, for
no reason other than that I love languages. And I am also utterly convinced
that all texts are fundamentally untranslatable. All one can hope to achieve in
another language is to permeate the very mindset of being itself, to seek a new
way of reaching the same destination.
And so the Viennese spoken by the undertaker remained untranslated as I sought to tell the saga indirectly, with little in the way of language and the dialogues as voice vectors, using universal emotions as a response to the film images. Two experiences sustained me along the way. Carol Reed’s The Third Man (up until that point the most Viennese film bar none) and William Faulkner. But what if one has to leave one’s own language entirely to be able to describe its sociotope? And when I read Faulkner, I forget what language I am in; it is my own, and I breathe and live in an absolute language, free of any regionality, and I am at the centre.”
Bernhard Kammel
director
In his waking dreams, realities and memories of his hopes and dreams blend with dreams of realities without hopes.
As his condition deteriorates, his mother arranges to have him cryogenically frozen at the Cryonics Department (which, conveniently, adjoins the hospital).
However, his ex-wife has summoned a priest to conduct the sacrament of extreme unction. While a farewell ceremony is underway, she improvises a blood transfusion, giving her blood to the man.
While the priest is dispensing the last rites to the wrong body in the dissecting room next door, the woman bleeds to death in the operating theatre; but then the man awakes from his coma.
The man’s mother rejoices at the fact that her daughter-in-law is dead, someone she always rejected as inadequate. Later, with her son and her grandson, she goes to Vienna’s Prater amusement park, where the story first began.
But then…
Director’s Statement
And so the Viennese spoken by the undertaker remained untranslated as I sought to tell the saga indirectly, with little in the way of language and the dialogues as voice vectors, using universal emotions as a response to the film images. Two experiences sustained me along the way. Carol Reed’s The Third Man (up until that point the most Viennese film bar none) and William Faulkner. But what if one has to leave one’s own language entirely to be able to describe its sociotope? And when I read Faulkner, I forget what language I am in; it is my own, and I breathe and live in an absolute language, free of any regionality, and I am at the centre.”
Bernhard Kammel
director
FESTIVALS & AWARDS
9th NEZ International Film Festival
Kolkata 2024 | Showcase Award
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Manikarnika International Film Festival
Varanasi 2022 | Best Foreign Feature Film
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GLOBAL CINEMA FESTIVAL
Siliguri | West Bengal | India
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BLOW-UP International Arthouse FILMFEST
Chicago 2018 | Antonioni Award Winner
Best Feature International
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33rd Warsaw Film Festival
Free Spirit Competition
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41e Festival des Films du Monde de Montréal
World Film Festival Montreal 2017
World Premiere
CAST
Lily - Enni Ojutkangas
Caspar - Edmund Kingsley
Little Caspar - Ilya Voznesensky
Prof. X - Larisa Udovichenko
Undertaker - Christoph Fälbl
Margo - Jan Graveson
Doctor - Francesca Mula
Father Noy - Ruben Paronyan
Margo, Lily and Prof. X voiced by Hayley-Marie Axe
Father Noy voiced by Jonny Mario Magnanti
Producer, script writer, production designer, director, cinematographer, editor
Bernhard Kammel
CREW
English translations: Stephen Grynwasser | Composer original music: Franz Hautzinger | Art director: Rudi Czettel | Costume designer: Elisabeth Nagl |Make-up design and SFX: Gabi Grünwald | Casting director: Vivek Singhania | Choreographer: Zinaida Lukas
Continuity: Renate Neugebauer | Unit manager: Anna Reschke, Renate Neugebauer |First assistant camera: Gerald Piesch | DIT: Jovan Stevanovic, Klaus Track | Key grip: Alex Haspel | Best boy electrician: Matthias Gansterer, Tobias Dorffner | Dolly grip: Urs Höfer | Assistant dolly grip: Florian Heusgen | Construction coordinator: Ferdinand Prinz | Set builder: Harald Lechner, Franz Spindler, Gunther Schäfer | Stand-by prop: Saskia Köck | Assistant costume designer: Michaela Kovacs | Wardrobe: Julia Kaßmanhuber | Make-up artist: Karin Ruthardt, Cathrine-Anne Philipp | SFX: TissiBrandhofer | Assistant SFX: Harry Siebler | Assistant to the editor: Klaus Track | Assistant to the director: Maria Udovichenko | Set runner: Jan Neugebauer | Set driver: Joschi Deininger, Bruno Bödenauer | Catering: Gaumenfreude Patrizia Fürnkranz-Markus
Music score, composition, trumpet: Franz Hautzinger | Clarinet & voice: Isabelle Duthoit
Hurdy gurdy: Matthias Loibner | Drums, percussion: Didi Kern | recording mix: Robin Gillard, FranzHautzinger
Tremens Film Ton Studio
Sound mixing: Bernhard Maisch, Manfred Folie | Sound design: Martin Gruenz, Manuel Grandpierre | Foley & dubbing recording: Manfred Folie | Foley artist: Andreas Schneider | Dolby Atmos sound mixing: Christian Lerch
Listo Media Services Cine Postproduction
Colour grading: Thomas Varga | Technical director: Herbert Fischer | SFX and titles: Geoffrey Kleindorfer | Digital cinema mastering: Alex Gruber, Mario Wessel
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