Das Gestell

Director: Philip Widmann    → show biography   ← hide biography

Biography: Philip Widmann, born in West Berlin, Germany, in 1980, he studied cultural anthropology, ethnology and American studies at Hamburg University and attended documentary film classes at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg. He has been a member of the independent film collective LaborBerlin since 2009.

Country: Germany

Year: 2017

Synopsis: A Japanese philosopher writes a letter to a famous German colleague. He asks the German to advise the Japanese people how to deal with the permeation of modern life by technology. More than 50 years later, the same issues are being discussed among academics and aspiring engineers. It is hard to grasp how humans and technology continue to coexist. Resorting to biographical trivia, mythological histories and the recounting of dreams is not helping them to see these issues any clearer. In the grainy images of the film, landscapes from an uncertain time appear, occasionally flooded by water and a cacophony of brass players. The uncontrollable finds its ways into a world that tries to minimise risks and thus creates new dangers.