Route to Cape Town

Director: Wolfgang Lehmann    → show biography   ← hide biography

Biography: Wolfgang Lehmann was born in Freiburg/Breisgau, Germany in 1967. Active in the film club there, Wolfgang Lehmann wrote film critiques and began working for the municipal cinema Freiburg, a post he held till until 2005. As member of the municipal cinema Freiburg, he developed and organised several retrospectives and programmes. He focused on presenting works of the film- and video avant-garde from its beginnings until today. His main contributions have been to unearth little known or forgotten films, as well as explore areas such as “expanded cinema” and multi media works.Wolfgang Lehmann has also displayed interest in the notion of live film performance in terms of a type of staged activity. Concluding his work in Freiburg was the organisation of the Festival Film Forum Freiburg: Expanded Cinema & avant-garde in 2004. His first cinematic efforts were made in 1989. Since 1994 Wolfgang Lehmann has realised and produced his own films, many of which were invited for showings at festivals and museums in Europe, Japan, Korea, China, Canada, USA and South America. Since the beginning of his artistic activity, he has not only been fascinated by film, but music as well. The ECLAT Festival commission, Meer (Sea) (2004), conceived with Telemach Wiesinger as well as with composer Misato Mochizuki, was a further development toward the connection of image and sound. His works can be characterised by an exact and often rhythmic-like montage, as well as extremely short takes that result in overlapping images. After living for a brief period in Berlin, Wolfgang Lehmann has resided in Rümpel (Schleswig-Holstein / Germany) and Stockholm (Sweden) with his wife and his son since 2006.

Country: Germany

Year: 2005

Synopsis: A picture and sound concept (Klangwerk), a sketch, a moving drawing. Streets leading to a town. Brief moments in the old center of Cape Town. Thoroughfares, people, pedestrians, brief flashes. Everything in motion; the people, the cars, the camera. Those who know the town and surrounding area will recognise the topography. All shots were taken out on the streets leading into the town but still, it is not a documentary; time is altered, camera takes are not linear. These are fragments of time. The film montage and the music allows the beginning to fall at the end and vice versa. Time frozen, parallel time. Motionlessness and movement combined. The rhythm begins slowly, gathers speed, interrupted by panoramic shots. Concrete sounds become music, a sound becomes a soundscape. A sound poem about a place surrounded in melancholy. Fleeting moments of people who we don't meet and won't get to know. It is the brief moment of encounter. What do we know of our fellow man? What does it mean exactly to know someone, a place, a landscape, a feeling, an experience? Memories. In the end everything is just a fleeting moment. Our most inner thoughts are written in ink on the tips of the waves of the sea. ROUTE TO CAPE TOWN is a short poem in black and white, in tones and shades. Something secretive, something dark and sad lies within. It is filmed from inside a moving vehicle but in the very movement itself lies the stationary, the brief moment, the life of a fragment. The scenes are out of focus, dirty, sometimes mirrored in the windshield. Our memories are not linear. A mosaic of sounds, pictures, impressions. What is hiding behind the faces of the people who glance in our direction as we pass by? The film uses concrete pictures and sounds to form a rhythmic abstract poem. A couple of short moments from Cape Town South Africa-a foreign city in moments, that by the end seems strangely familiar to us.

Tags: Experimental film