Not Like Before
From January to November 2004, as a kind of carnet de voyage alongside our other activities, we asked one and the same question of various people we met on our journeys, including friends: "Do you remember a moment in your life when something really changed?" We requested them to tell us a story to illustrate their reply, and we filmed them.
Casts & Crew
Also Directed by Nicolas Humbert
Filmed in Patmos in May 1999, this is Robert Lax’s last year in Greece, roughly his last year of life. For 21 minutes you see only Lax’s head and his right hand, which holds a wooden staff of sorts (a walking stick or ... a broomstick?!). He wears a navy blue knit hat. The only movement is in his eyes, and ever so slight movements of his head. Lax does not look at the camera, his eyes are mostly downcast, but he is awake and aware, watching and waiting, and you are drawn into his profound stillness. All of those who were able to meet Lax during his lifetime consider it a particular stroke of fortune. They say that from that point on he became part of their bodies and souls, as though they had met a true saint. My Eye Your Eye is like being in the presence of holiness. For 20 minutes. Watching and waiting. I've always wanted to know better what Bob Lax was like - how he was. This film does it.
A surrealist tribute to The Rolling Stones.
A film that ressembles a dream. Shot over a period of several years, it is composed of fragments of memory and moments of life woven together to create a sequence of microscopic stories. “Vagabonding Images” is a film that plays with the forms of cinematic language inspired by the poetic collage techniques of the French Surrealists and Japanese Haiku poets.
Wanted! Hanns Eisler is a filmic and musical search for traces; an approach to Eisler's life as a homeless wanderer between worlds and his work, which retains its charisma and inspires subsequent generations of artists to new musical experiments.
Short film as part of DVD extras on the Edition Filmmuseum edition of Why should I buy a bed when all that I want is sleep?, also made by Nicolas Humbert & Werner Penzel.
In this film, Humbert is on the trail of his own history. Wolfsgrub is the name of the house where Humbert's mother lives, and though she is getting on in years, she becomes young again as she answers her son's questions. Humbert allows his mother the space and time to tell her story, portraying he everyday life through the use of concentrated images. From the bits and pieces of these narrative fragments, a stunning portrait of a freethinking woman emerges.
The highway, revisited. Years later. Transformation of a locale. A place of mobility that, in the meantime, has become a place of silence.
Philip, Max, and Julia Rossmann are brothers and sister. Out of their own life, they try to continue childhood bonds. Through their entanglement in a mysterious event, the three are torn apart. For each, a new beginning. The film begins a year later. Quite impulsively, Philip Rossmann leaves his hide-out to go and look for his lost brother. He meets former friends with whose help he tries to reconstruct his brother's trail. Despite the setbacks his research brings, he is able to track down his brother. They meet.
Also Directed by Werner Penzel
Filmed in Patmos in May 1999, this is Robert Lax’s last year in Greece, roughly his last year of life. For 21 minutes you see only Lax’s head and his right hand, which holds a wooden staff of sorts (a walking stick or ... a broomstick?!). He wears a navy blue knit hat. The only movement is in his eyes, and ever so slight movements of his head. Lax does not look at the camera, his eyes are mostly downcast, but he is awake and aware, watching and waiting, and you are drawn into his profound stillness. All of those who were able to meet Lax during his lifetime consider it a particular stroke of fortune. They say that from that point on he became part of their bodies and souls, as though they had met a true saint. My Eye Your Eye is like being in the presence of holiness. For 20 minutes. Watching and waiting. I've always wanted to know better what Bob Lax was like - how he was. This film does it.
Robert Lax (1915-2000) was a poet with a singular vision and style whose quest to live an authentic life as both an artist and a spiritual seeker inspired Thomas Merton, Jack Kerouac, William Maxwell and countless others. Known in the U.S. primarily as Merton’s best friend and in Europe as a daringly original avant-garde poet, Lax lived a life of simplicity, humility and grace that continues to encourage and motivate readers and followers. This film is a portrait of Robert Lax as he was to those who were fortunate to visit him during his thirty years of living on the Greek island of Patmos.
Hidden in the wooded mountains on the west coast of Japan lies the small Zen monastery Antaiji. A young woman sets off to immerse herself through autumn, winter and spring in the adventures of monastic life. The young woman is Sabine Timoteo from Switzerland. The abbot of the monastery is Muho Noelke, born in Berlin. An interplay between the philosophy of the Japanese Zen master Kodo Sawaki and the surprises brought forth by everyday life.
Short film as part of DVD extras on the Edition Filmmuseum edition of Why should I buy a bed when all that I want is sleep?, also made by Nicolas Humbert & Werner Penzel.
Documentary by Werner Penzel.
In 1996, cinematographer Helge Weindler died in Almeria, Spain, while shooting his wife Doris Dörrie's new film. A year later, she set out to retrace her grief and pain in a very private film.
No overview found.
Filmmakers Nicolaus Humbert and Werner Penzel examine the nature of nomadic existence in this documentary, from the literal nomads of North Africa to the more metaphorical kind of wanderer, such as American poet and ex-pat Robert Lax. Humbert and Penzel focus especially on the nomad's paradoxical ability to fully inhabit every moment while remaining coolly detached from specific locales and anxious thoughts about the past or future.
Johann le Guillerm, the tightrope walker who had become one of the main characters in Middle of the Moment, decided to found a new circus and called it “Cirque Ici.” In the fall of 1997, we visited him on the first European tour of his solo circus performance and shot with him for three days and nights.