A Demonstration
Germany 2020 • experimental film • German • 24 min.
Nomination in the experimental category of up to 30 minutes
Director, Screenplay: Sasha Litvintseva, Beny Wagner
Cinematography: Sasha Litvintseva, Beny Wagner
Sound: Sasha Litvintseva, Beny Wagner
Editing: Sasha Litvintseva, Beny Wagner
Production: Daan Milius, Hans van Hezik (Video Power) with Guillaume Cailleau (CaSk Films)
A monster film without monsters: Early modern science devised the taxonomies of monsters and monstrosities that inspired this film, revealing a view of nature that is almost inconceivable today. Researchers were guided by a logic according to which scientific truths were arrived at on the basis of visual analogies. The word monster itself comes from the Latin monstrare, which means to show, reveal, demonstrate. A DEMONSTRATION takes up this matter in a poetic exploration of the limits of vision and the metamorphosis of form.
Jury Statement
With A DEMONSTRATION, the two filmmakers Beny Wagner and Sasha Litvintseva have achieved something extremely fascinating: They take us right into the heart of the principles of early Western European natural sciences, into Renaissance humanism, in which fundamental knowledge was based primarily on visual analogies. Through multi-layered and audiovisually beguiling compositions, a poetic and multidimensional reflection emerges that does not explain its references and contents, but makes them almost physically tangible. Contextualisation of forms, visualised metamorphoses, playful pictorial analogies and associative montages: by means of a masterly abundance of cinematic means, a view of the world opens up in the film that would be almost impossible to convey in words.