Anna and the Tower
Video still
Video still
3-channel video installation with sound: 3 synchronized projections, 3-panel screen structure, custom seating, and speakers | 2014 | 20:24
The fable Anna and the Tower presents an encounter with Anna, a newly trained air traffic controller on duty at Magdeburg-Cochstedt International Airport, a former Soviet airbase just outside Berlin. While the airport had been fully renovated in 2010, it was still seldom used for commercial flights four years later, when the film was shot on location. With the control tower as stage and no plane in sight, Anna scans the sky as if performing a ritual and rehearses coded communication to pass the time. She appears as both an avatar, repeating air-to-ground commands in a scripted performance of readiness that conjures a hallucinatory narrative choreography of flight, and a neoliberal state agent awaiting economic prosperity.
The stage-like installation features three conjoined screens, referencing the windows of Anna’s tower at dawn, dusk, and night. The camera alternates between Anna the avatar, the empty landscape, and weather changes, evoking a generically unsettled location. Time shuffles between projection and prediction, modeling a productivist desire to shape reality. Isolated in her tower, Anna optimistically stands by for a future modeled for economic performance or, as economists say, a soft landing.
Co-commissioned by the Goethe-Institut Toronto and the Toronto International Film Festival
Credits
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Appearing:
Anna Iwanow (air traffic controller) -
Field producer:
Caspar Fischer -
Cinematographer:
Daniel Sippel -
Sound recording:
Christian Lutz -
Editing:
Mathieu Bouchard-Malo -
Sound mix:
Matt Rogalsky -
Colour grading:
Christoph Manz -
Co-commissioners:
Goethe-Institut Toronto and Toronto International Film Festival -
Additional funding:
University of Hertfordshire
Exhibition view, Scrap Metal and TIFF 2014, Toronto (photographed by Tom Arban)
Related Texts
Future Projections: Lynne Marsh German Film @ Canada
Author: Jutta Brendemuehl
Goethe-Institut Toronto, 2014
Exhibition view, Scrap Metal and TIFF 2014, Toronto (photographed by Tom Arban)
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2020
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2017
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Berlinische Galerie
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2014
Anna and the Tower
Toronto International Film Festival at Scrap Metal
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2014
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Screening