Hypozentrum
Hypocentre
by Xenia Lesniewski
Germany 2013, 15 minutes
Picture yourself on the dance floor. The music is techno, dumb and steady, it will put you in some kind of trance no matter what drugs you have or haven’t taken. You mind wanders – from your neighbor back to your childhood to everything you’ve experienced and remember. Up into the sky and the space beyond. This is the situation German director Xenia Lesniewski (27) puts you into in her animated short “Hypocentre”. A stream of consciousness passes by, faster than you can realize it or think about what you are seeing. It’s a very demanding film. A naked woman, a horse and the stars in outer space are the only continuum beside the music. You don’t see the young couple which is arguing in a friendly way, you only see a black screen, but you hear them. It’s a typical talk about what to do next and what’s important in life. What they don’t talk about passes by with a frequency of four pictures per second: nude women, E.T., strawberries, the globe, a plane, Snow White, Pinocchio, Karl Lagerfeld, scary dwarfs in purple frocks, fashion-logos. Seeing and hearing is not enough, you also have to read: monologues by German author Heinrich von Kleist about Pentesilea (1777-1816) eating Achilles because she loves him. Nothing really makes sense, but the film is more than a selfish attempt to handle childhood, youth and the first steps of adulthood. It is an invitation to think on your own. The pictures Lesniewski chose are like scenes from a comic book that appear and vanish. You won’t be able to catch each item at first sight; they create a tension which may be unpleasant, but are also very demanding. A hard-boiled film for those who want to cross all limits. If you survive, you are able to make you own film.
von Andrea Dittgen
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