Born in Schongau, Germany in 1976, the filmmaker lives and works in Berlin and Finland. Between 1996 and 2005, he studied film and painting in Vienna, Helsinki and Potsdam. His video collages and films are poised on the border between visual arts and auteur cinema and have been presented in museums, galleries and at film festivals. He has won numerous awards, including the 2013 German Short Film Award. His films have featured a number of times in Berlinale Shorts, most recently Glittering Barbieblood in 2021.
What was your starting point for „Pacific Vein“?
I was on a 3-month residency in Los Angeles (Villa Aurora) and made daily explorations in the area (also Las Vegas). After 50 episodes of a live-action series and a feature film script, I had the urge of getting again into video collages and mixing documentary, fiction, and media images.
Do you have a favorite moment in the film? Which one and why this one in particular?
When the bison and faceless cowboy meet in front of the Facebook ruin. It is poetic and somehow timeless.
What do you like about the short form?
First and foremost, I try to make works that stand both in a screening and an exhibition situation. Each work has its own form and conditions. It is certainly more informal and independent to make a „shorter“ work. A long work fits better into classical cinema distribution but has no specific criteria of quality.
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„The German Pacific Vein (Ulu Braun, 2024, feature) presents us with a panopticon of digital fragmentation, a slowly panning shot of aggressively garish Americana frittering away in the California desert. In digital cut-outs, we get John Wayne, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Julian Assange musing on various aspects of the world, surrounded by a wasteland of modern trash. It’s a very ‘zoomer’ piece of work, tuned into the hyperactive stream of consciousness of half-ideas and brief thoughts that the internet encourages. Films so often struggle to visually convey the ugly mess of the World Wide Web —- in particular, how this mass of information is changing the way we think and perceive the world — but shorts like Pacific Vein are going some way to developing a genuine filmic language that integrates the digital world.“
mention by Fedor Tot for Journey into Cinema
„Pacific Vein, Ulu Braun with Niina Lehtonen-Braun, Joachim Stargard, Lily Cummings, David Ristau, Valentin Lorenz (Germany)The endless tracking shot through a picturesque US panorama allows the American Dream to slide into ghostly auto-suggestion while Assange and Bezos ponder life.“
mention in Cartoon Brew
„So wendete Ulu Braun bei „Pacific Vein“ eine Collage-Technik an.“
mention by Doreen Kaltenecker for Testkammer
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ETC.
„Und die digitale Collage Pacific Vein mutet wie die zeitgenössische Reinkarnation eines Hieronymus Bosch-Gemäldes an.“
interview with section head Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck for Berlinale Topics
reaction on letterboxd
Berlinale Shorts 