The film provides brief glimpses of rooms flooded with light. The Bolex camera purrs. Twenty years after the dissolution of the Swiss publishing house Pendo, founded in 1971, its history is personified by descendant Theresia Weigner and her friend Nicolas, who repeatedly circle around this legacy in all its gravity, sifting through it and losing it again. Here, particles of memory are stacked, cared for and stowed away. Remaining editions, no longer hot off the press but in their original packaging, unrealized manuscripts, cover drafts, audio cassettes, office supplies, correspondence, tax documents lie ready as if in a time capsule: Books by Margarete Mitscherlich, Dorothee Sölle, Dom Hélder Câmara, illustrated books about Robert Lax or the Sihl Valley. René Frölke’s film becomes the media structure of this archive and a simple cabinet of curiosities. He finds his own annotations in the inner pull of the artifacts and accompanies the overburdened and persistent keepers on their paths through everyday life and piles of material. Writing elements from the film script also play a part.
At the end of the corridor, jazz music plays from a small radio.
Text from the Berlinale 2024 Forum catalog
