UID:
kobvindex_ZLB14423756
Format:
85 min.
Content:
Swiss director Véronique Goël's fifth feature is about the Villa Kenwin, near Montreux. The name is a composite of the couple who had it built: "Ken" for Kenneth Macpherson, filmmaker, and "win" for Winifred Bryher-Macpherson, writer and daughter of British businessman Sir John Reeves Ellerman. A striking example of functional architecture, the Villa Kenwin is a concrete materialization of the intellectual utopia of a certain European avant-garde, to which the Macphersons and their circle of friends (the American poet Hilda Doolittle, who signed her works HD, Oswell Blackeston, Robert Herring, Dorothy Richardson) actively belonged thanks to their cinema review Close Up and Kenneth Macpherson's films. Built in 1930 according to blueprints of a young Berlin architect Hermann Henselmann, fascinated by the ideas of Le Corbusier, the Villa Kenwin came into being the same year as Borderline, the only one of Macpherson's films that has been preserved complete - and which is being presented in the Rediscovering Swiss Cinema section. Goël uses elaborate camera movements and stationary "everyday" sequences shots to describe a building that reflected the activities and preoccupations of Bryher and Macpherson. In her subjective recreation of the villa's two original owners, the filmmaker also intercuts a number of photos, graphics and film footage on Bryher, HD and Macpherson, the latter occupying an essential place in the film. Similarly, the soundtrack, made up mainly of background sounds and voice overs (reading the various correspondence and a text by the daughter of HD, Perdita Schafner, about her childhood), complement a cinematic approach capable of suggesting the identity of each of these artists. (49. Internationales Filmfestival von Locarno)
Note:
Orig.: Schweiz, 1996
,
Engl.
In:
Borderline : [DVD Video mit Movietext], London, 2007, (2007)
Language:
English
Keywords:
Villa Kenwin
;
DVD-Video
;
Close up (Zeitschrift)
;
Villa Kenwin
;
Geistesleben
;
DVD-Video
;
DVD-Video
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