With her experimental performance film “Be someone else”, director If Nickl takes us on a journey into the subconscious, on a Dantesque trip navigating the archetypes of (hu)mankind and its psyche(s).

In hypnotic, ritualistic images we encounter themes like Eros and Thanatos, the simultaneous birth of Self and its personae (which we all take on in order to survive in the social order , and as a malleable element -suggested in the form of a puppet) and – in the best case – we will be seduced to experience these “great” building blocks of the human soul and existence or at least intuit them somehow on this trip (in the most positive sense of the word).

The magical circle the makers draw in their film is vast, yet still remains close to the body, the physical. It stays very personal and resembles a filterless descent into the seemingly chaotic associative chain of thoughts and feelings. Fragments of Ouroborus, pagan rituals, augurs who – might – want to foretell the future by rummaging around in the intestines of an animal, a visceral experience, an adventure a deep rooted part in all of us craves. All these faceless – but by no means spineless – figures that inhabit “Be someone else”, express a morcel of the inner fabric of the artist, in a performative and in a literal sense, and they mean to take us by the hand to dreamwalk through this hall of mirrors and tear at our reality. David Bowie himself ‚takes his place’ as the resurrected Lazarus Creative Overlord. And that’s the way it must be.


CREDITS:
Director: If Nickl
Cinematography & Editing: Clemens Plank-Bachselten
Cast: Michaela Seidel, Daniel Lindner, Georg Dinstl, If Nickl, Clemens Plank-Bachselten, Nina Markart, Jasmin Abfalter, Michael Buchebner, Vanessa Kröll
Music: Pascal Holper & Nada Aiko


LINKS to director If Nickl