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DMD KIU LIDT

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DMD KIU LIDT

Synopsis

DMD KIU LIDT is an anti-music film which follows the Austrian pop-rock band Ja, Panik, and their social circle of fellow musicians in Berlin and Vienna.  It is a chronicle of a group that centers on the conditions of music-making in a state of prolonged sadness dominated by the shadow of a permanent crisis (of capitalism). There is no more playing of instruments, even the low hum of amps quickly dies out. In the knowledge that the very construct of their insular community is cracking at its foundation, the protagonists roam through abandoned architecture and forests, over horserace tracks, nighttime streets, and boulevards with no end in sight. Restrained conversations revolve around their own mental states and the adversities surrounding them on all sides. The characters are able to avoid contact with the world around them, yet maintain a quiet tenderness between themselves. The actors — all musicians — play themselves, acting out a consciously absurd drama about art, depression, and love.

Director’s statement

The anti-music film DMD KIU LIDT has not been conceived primarily as a portrait of musicians. It has been constructed much more as an ensemble of miniature scenes which take up motifs and moods from the song The Manifestation of Capitalism in our Lives is Sadness” and develop them cinematically.

Not only the members of Ja, Panik, but also their fellow musicians Christiane Rösinger, Hans Unstern, Chris Imler and Maurice Summen appear in the film. The supposedly essential act of the musician’s being, musical performance is mostly excluded from the anti-music film DMD KIU LIDT. Instead, the film concentrates on the depiction of the structures and circumstances which come with the production of music.

JA, PANIK created quite a stir in the German-lanugage music scene with their three consecutively released albums: The Taste and the Money (2006), The Angst and the Money (2009), DMD KIU LIDT (2011) and their latest release Libertatia (2014). The group’s cheerful use of a specific kind of bricolage, which pieces together a broad spectrum of literary and theoretical allusions: from Walter Benjamin, over John Cage to Bertolt Brecht, forms their sound and lyrics.

The anti-music film DMD KIU LIDT aims not only to be a chronicle of this very talented group of musicians, but also to create a filmic equivalent to the German term diskurspop (discourse pop). The term loosely describes a music that desires to be a serious and accessible expression of (post-)pop, while it is conscious of being a result of theoretical, literary and social discourse. Diskurspop playfully questions its own foundations and constantly rearranges its influences to create something new out of that which is old, abandoned and ludicrous.

DMD KIU LIDT follows this line of thought, questions the traditional representation of music producers in cinema and articulates its own idea of the anti-music film.

(Georg Tiller)

For us it’s about portraying a group of people whose love, whose entire sentimental resources are one political act and who then understand the conducting of this act as work. A group of people which has zero interest in surviving, but rather wants either to live or to die.

The band Ja, Panik and its circle will throw itself into this relentlessly forward-pressing crescendo. Any appearance of improvisation will be just that: an appearance, because in truth, every word has already been written. We will try to carry over the dramaturgy, the structure and the dynamics of the song DMD KIU LIDT on the level of content as well as form, however without letting the music play. We are thinking more about Warhol’s Chelsea Girls than Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil. But in the end, we are thinking about both.

(Andreas Spechtl)

Length: 55 min
Format: Red 4k / B&W
Ratio: 1:1.85
Language: German

Country / Year

Austria, Germany / 2014

Production

Subobscura Films AT naivsuperfilm DE

Distribution

sixpackfilm

Cast

Ja, Panik (Andreas Spechtl, 
Sebastian Janata, Christian Treppo, Stefan Pabst, Thomas Schleicher) 
Christiane Rösinger
Hans Unstern
Chris Imler
Maurice Summen

Crew

Director, Producer
Georg Tiller
Writer
Georg Tiller / Ja, Panik
Cinematography
Claudio Pfeifer
Editor
Viktor Hoffmann, Marcin Malaszczak
Camera Assistant
Anna Hofbauer
Sound Recording
Karina Kohler, Ingo Reiter
Sounddesign
Jochen Jezussek
Gaffer
Mario Krause
Music
Ja, Panik / Hans Unstern

Supported by

Bmukk

Film Festivals

Berlinale Forum
Diagonale Graz
Poolinale Wien
Xposed International Queer Film Festival 
Riga International Film Festival
Bideodromo, Bilbao
Flexiff Filmfestival
Golden Orchid Film Festival
Filmz — Festival des deutschen Kinos
Sarajevo Film Winter

Awards

Nominated for the Silver Eye Award, East Silver Market

Trailer