Keren Cytter

Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism.

Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism.

Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism.

Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism.

MIDDLE OF BEYOND blends fiction, news clips, and animation recounting ten days in the life of Malte Krumm, a month after the latest US elections. The film depicts the numbness of a world flooded by information and social media activity, where the borders between reality and illusion are crumbling and narcissism and self-promotion overshadow moral values.

MIDDLE OF BEYOND blends fiction, news clips, and animation recounting ten days in the life of Malte Krumm, a month after the latest US elections. The film depicts the numbness of a world flooded by information and social media activity, where the borders between reality and illusion are crumbling and narcissism and self-promotion overshadow moral values.

MIDDLE OF BEYOND blends fiction, news clips, and animation recounting ten days in the life of Malte Krumm, a month after the latest US elections. The film depicts the numbness of a world flooded by information and social media activity, where the borders between reality and illusion are crumbling and narcissism and self-promotion overshadow moral values.

Jack Santos is a retired detective who is out to punish the men responsible for the murder of his mother, wife, and daughter.

Jack Santos is a retired detective who is out to punish the men responsible for the murder of his mother, wife, and daughter.

Jack Santos is a retired detective who is out to punish the men responsible for the murder of his mother, wife, and daughter.

Jack Santos is a retired detective who is out to punish the men responsible for the murder of his mother, wife, and daughter.

Commissioned by LUX and the Independent Cinema Office, London as part of a series of eight short artists’ films shown in major cinemas as interventions before commercial feature films (Taken from Tate Modern's website)

The story of Four Seasons revolves around a woman entering her neighbor’s apartment to complain about the loud music but finds the neighbor naked in his bathtub and bleeding. The narrative then becomes more complex and incoherent, as the man continuously refers to her as “Stella”, even though she keeps on telling him that her name is Lucy. The absurd story line, referring to Roman Polanski’s The Tenant (1976) and Tennessee Williams’ film A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) as much as to Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966) or Jorge Louis Borges’ novel The Immortal (1949), makes from Four Seasons a spectacular, lo-fi mixture of film-noir, thriller, documentary, soap opera and melodrama.

The “story” can be reduced to three structural elements: a man, a woman, a gun. All the narrative possibilities that could occur in this situation are shifted through in the film’s 7 minute, 50 second span, the actors reciting their dialogue in a deadpan monotone that markedly contrasts with the melodramatic flavor of the words they are speaking, thus highlighting the artificiality of the filmic situation and exposing its constructedness—the very thing that mainstream cinemas typically strive to conceal.

With simple means, Keren Cytter stages a Shakespearean drama in a stripped contemporary Berlin apartment. Mortality and decay, in connection with love, are themes of all times. The motif is simple: a 42-year-old woman is confronted by her mirror image with the fact that she’s not sixteen anymore, she is being rejected by her crush and has no eyes for the man who loves her.

In The Nightmare, a man dreams that he is awake, and that his female roommate is talking about him. He is in love with her, but she rejects him. When the protagonist wakes, he murders his roommate and goes back to sleep. In his dream the woman is still alive, and he murders her again.

In The Nightmare, a man dreams that he is awake, and that his female roommate is talking about him. He is in love with her, but she rejects him. When the protagonist wakes, he murders his roommate and goes back to sleep. In his dream the woman is still alive, and he murders her again.