GREEN DESERT
Experimental Short Film by Carolina Schmidt
GREEN DESERT (2022)
GREEN DESERT is an Experimental Short Film (10min) produced and directed by Carolina Schmidt, filmed with a small team of emerging filmmakers in between the green idyllic landscapes of Bavaria and Austria. This truly bizarre film was completed recently and has already been shown on various occations – and was selected for the Main Competition of the 14th Sarajevo Omladinski Film Festival, taking place from 19.-23 of July as well as for the short film competition of the 16th Fünf Seen Film Festival (Five Lakes Film Festival) in late August, the Win Panorama Student category at Tetova International Film Festival (North Macedonia), Alexandre Trauner Film Festival in Hungary as well as the Austrian Film Festival at Schikaneder Kino, Vienna.
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At the Fünf Seen Filmfestival, GREEN DESERT is shown within the Video- Art short film program. According to the festival, this category presents films that use unusual camera angles, cuts, sound, crossing genres and more. More Info here
The film is also featured on the website of Cinema Next, a platform for emerging filmmakers in Austria: https://www.cinemanext.at/film/gruene-wueste
Fashion by Berlin-based designers
Céline van de Loo
Jasmin Erb
Elisabeth von der Tannen
Julia Ballardt
Larissa Falk
SYNOPSIS
A woman is sitting in a room with red walls. One step over the threshold and she stands in the middle of a green and empty landscape where she embarks on a mystical journey. Strange and confusing figures cross her path. An ambiguity remains throughout this journey: Where do we go, who are we, where do we come from? A film on the beauty of observing life
Between alienation and familiarity the protagonist wanders through this world – but where to? This is the question. A question about space and identity which in ‚Green Desert‘ is always a multiplicity.
Sebastian Seidler, Film Critic
Detached, strange and bizarre: this ‚Green Desert‘ is a mysterious space. However, is it really more puzzling than the real world? The film questions perceptions of norm, the ’self‘ and the ‚other‘.
This ‚Green Desert“ is not a green field but instead an inner landscape which without a single spoken word shows us the ambiguity of identity
Sebastian Seidler, Film Critic
Director’s Statement
I am not only passionate about the medium film and music, but cultural anthropology is at the core of my interests and highly influences my thoughts and how I relate to the world. Observation is one of the key skills in anthropological field work, whether with a camera or without. For the project Green Desert I wanted to capture the unique feeling of observing the everyday, the seemingly ’normal‘ and myself. The more I observe people and myself, the more questions emerge and none get answered. I walk and walk and the deeper I delve into the many different worlds of this world the more I am fascinated by all the stories and myths we tell about ourselves, others, nature and life. A lot of people associate the film with dreams, however I was not inspired by dreams but by reality. Furthermore, I don’t consider the film to be a dream – or detached from reality – it is very much real. All it does is take elements from daily life and recompose them to a collage of situations and landscapes which might seem unusual on the first sight. The landscape artist captures the world as he sees it, the fighting boys perform an imagination of manhood; the man with the pole could perhaps give us an interview, what’s behind his daily practice of hitting poles into the ground?
Considering that everything we do and the meanings we produce about each and every detail of our daily lives is contingent, taking elements from the everyday and putting them into a new context makes these very ’normal‘ things seem a bit… off. But that really is the beauty of observing the wonders of the everyday.
Throughout the whole film, the main character Elsa is seen walking, walking, walking. A film that has inspired me for more than a decade is ‚Gerry‘ by Gus van Sant, where two guys walk through the desert, from beginning to end until one of them dies. The theme of the aimless walk with no real goal or direction has been a topic in my research and artistic practice. In ‚Gerry‘, the two young men don’t simply walk through the desert – without a lot of spoken words it becomes clear that it is a walk through life, thinking about death, love, identity, meaningThe desert in Green Desert also functions like an empty canvas, a sort of empty landscape in which all the questions of life can be asked. However, this particular Desert ist Green – within this empty field, the loneliness and the detachment there is also life – which essentially is made of the meanings and stories we tell ourselves about the world.
After finishing school, Peruvian-German director and music composer Carolina Schmidt (1997) spent a year at an atelier project (International Munich Art Lab) where she experimented in the fields of fine arts and new media. She discovered her passion for film which led her to studying Multimediaart in Salzburg with a semester abroad at the University of Newcastle (AUS), where she focused on film history and documentary film. After finishing an internship at Documentary Campus e.V. in Munich and her graduation film Green Desert, she is now studying European Cultural Anthropology (MA) at the LMU Munich and Communication for Development (MA) and continues follow her passion for strange, playful and mystical films, art and music.
CREDITS
Regie, Buch, Produktion – Carolina schmidt
Kamera – Georg Papadelis
1st AC – Thomas Brunner
2nd AC – Anna Hadaier
Gaffer – Christoph Platzer, Ahmed Issa
Set-Design – Julia Kressirer, Magdalena Umkehrer
Kostüm – Hanna Schmidt
Maske – Xenia Stütz-Pribik
Haar-Stylist -Sebastian Schönefeld
Produktionsassistenz – Sarah Friedl, David David Graudenz
Catering – Theresa Klotz
Aufnahmeleitung – Julia Kressirer, Simone Kaltenbrunner
VFX Artist – Eugenia Goffre
Musik-Carolina Schmidt
Postproduction Sound- Florian Schaubmeier
Behind the scenes / Fashion Photography – Anna Hadaier, Julia Kressirer
Stelzenläufer by ZEBRA Stelzentheater/ zebra-stelzen.de
Cast
Elsa Böhm (main cast), Katharina Unger, Hiwa Naqshi, Margit Bischlager, Tyler & Julien Tikeli, Thomas Könnecke, Christian Bergler, Magdalena Umkehrer, Winfried Kurzeder, Andrea Behrens, Antonia Behrens, Julia Plank, Anna Stadler, Arthur Fuchs, Rolf Kassalicky
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