Section: Polskie Horyzonty

PRZEDCZAS VOR ZEIT

Time Before Land

Juliane Henrich

DE, 2021, 79 Min

With the help of an alter ego director Juliane Henrich embarks on a search for her ancestral roots in Silesia, a region that has belonged to Poland since 1945. And in place of unambiguous evidence about her grandfather, she instead learns a lot about the eventful history of a once multicultural area, encounters locals who are more than happy to talk and comes across traces of dinosaurs.

Prior to the Second World War the director's grandfather worked as an organist in a church in the Silesian provincial town of Schönhorst, which today belongs to Poland and is called Krasiejów. Having arrived there, she has an actress serve as her alter ego; the latter proceeds to make enquiries and talk to residents and yet ultimately, she receives conflicting evidence about her ancestor. Alongside the biographical research the region’s overarching history comes ever more to the foreground. The war has left its mark not only on people's minds, but also on the landscape, such as a Nazi-style amphitheatre overgrown with weeds, next to which a Polish memorial now stands. Aided by a linguistic perspective language, with communication at times fluent and at others rather halting, the protagonist/director reflects, at times rather humorously, on the German-Polish relationship in the specific context of Silesia. The excavations of dinosaur skeletons in Krasiejów are also symbolic of research into the past. Some of them were carried miles by rivers and have resulted in a tourist attraction: the dinosaur theme park "JuraPark".

Weltspiegel Saal 2: original version with English subtitles.

Further performance:

Norwid Library Zielona Góra PH12

Performance postponed to a later date, please check the website of the Norwid Library Zielona Góra.

Drehbuch
Juliane Henrich

Kamera
Juliane Henrich

Ton
Jochen Jezussek, Juliane Henrich

Schnitt
Juliane Henrich

Musik
Benedikt Schiefer

Darsteller
Nannina Matz

Produzent
Juliane Henrich

Co-Produktion
Thomas Kaske

Juliane Henrich - (*1983) studied film, art, and creative writing in Leipzig, Berlin,and Jerusalem. Her films frequently explore places whose histories have been overwritten. The works have been shown at film festivals and exhibitions including: the Berlinale/Forum Expanded, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Duisburg Documentary Film Week, Kassel Documentary Filmand Video Festival, Visions du Réel in Nyon, Jihlava IDFF, the Images Festival in Toronto, and DocBuenosAires. The films are distributed by Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art. Time Before Land is her first feature-length film.

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