Being and Nothingness
Das Sein und das Nichts

part of the film collection Free Radicals

Theatrical Version
Austria/Luxembourg 2007 l 10 min l colour l
35 mm l 1:1,66 l Dolby Digital l without dialogue

World Premiere: International Film Festival Rotterdam 2007
Prix UIP - Short Film Nominee for the European Film Awards

Live Version
Austria / Luxembourg 2007 l 4:10 min l colour l video l
film sound & music by Beat Furrer, performed live by Klangforum Wien

International Premiere: Biennale di Venezia 2007
Austrian Premiere: Wien Modern Ouverture 2007

Written & Directed by Bady Minck
Music: Beat Furrer performed by Klangforum Wien
Camera: Jörn Staeger, Martin Putz
Editing: Frédéric Fichefet
Digital Post-Production: Eni Brandner
Production Coordination: Karin Berghammer
Production Manager: Alfie Kral
Producers: Alexander Dumreicher-Ivanceanu, Gabriele Kranzelbinder, Bady Minck
Production: AMOUR FOU Wien & Minotaurus Film Luxembourg
Supported by Filmfund Luxembourg, BKA.kunst, ORF Innovation, Stadt Wien

Cast: Beat Furrer, Pozzo Furrer, Hans Lugmair, the musicians of Klangforum Wien >> Markus Deuter, Andreas Eberle, Vera Fischer, Thomas Frey, Uli Fussenegger, Andrew Jezek, Andreas Lindenbaum, Gunde Jäch-Micko, Florian Müller, Anders Nyqvist, Dimitrios Polisoidis, Edurne Santos, Sophie Schafleitner, Lukas Schiske, Petra Stump, Christoph Walder, Björn Wilker, Bernhard Zachhuber

Music: Beat Furrer "Ein Lied, das über das Ende des Liedes hinaus ein anderes Ende finden wollte" (c) Alkor-Edition

Distribution: Sixpack Film
Distribution Theatrical Version: Light Cone Paris

fotos l making of l credits l storyboard l partitur l press l web l bio l filmo l free radicals

For the film & music project Free Radicals, Bady Minck realises the two short films Being and Nothingness and Seems To Be together with Klangforum Wien.

Being and Nothingness makes the parameters of the generation of music visible. Music is poured into pictures: What you see is what you hear. Conductor Beat Furrer appears as the tamer of time and the master of silence. The individual musicians are only visible in the extremely brief moments in which they play, with their bodies representing the notes on a visualized score. The progressive deconstruction of the music is accompanied visually by a deconstructed image.
Synopsis

Being and Nothingness transforms a piece of music into a visual and examines the role of humans in this performance of sound and light. After a prologue in which composer and conductor Beat Furrer is shown obtaining and arranging a score by Schumann, its performance is the film's actual theme: As the notes pass through the picture, the musicians of the Klangforum Wien ensemble appear and disappear according to their acoustic contribution. The result is a choreography of sound, and the music's transience and vastness is turned into a ballet of bodies which, somewhere between presence and absence, commemorates the instability of being as a dialectic micro-spectacle.
Enjoyment of the music produces optical ghosts which — resembling the heads of musical notes — scurry across the picture, adding rhythm to the composition visually. As the musical texture thins out during the finale, the visual elements become increasingly fragmentary: a twitching at the edge of perception, a nervous optical irritation which partially settles into the subconscious. At the conclusion the conductor, who had previously entered the pandemonium of sounds as a deus ex machina, gratefully accepts the applause in a white cube. A white square on a white background, a complete defusing of the grand story, and the nadir in the production of sound. Being-in-itself, wrote Sartre, is unchanging, undifferentiated pure being, simply the fullness of being without any sort of negation. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Thomas Miessgang

Being and Nothingness visualizes a fantastic journey into a musical score. The musicians appear and disappear in the same way as the notes and sounds. Bady Minck has given music a virtual space — and the main scene possibly plays out in the mind of the conductor and composer, who obliterates the musicians by means of a hand gesture.
Martin Pieper

A daytime exterior, a street, an antique shop, a book opens and reveals a musical score, the Novelette n° 8 opus 21 by Schumann. The composer and conductor Beat Furrer is the buyer and soon-to-be arranger of this score. Being and Nothingness offers a variation on the text by Jean-Paul Sartre as underlined by the musical titel given by Beat Furrer: Ein Lied, das über das Ende des Liedes hinaus ein anderes Ende finden wollte — a song that aimed to find another ending beyond the end of the song.
Catalogue FID Marseille

Festivals (41)
siCORTO Semana Internacional del Corto Cochabamba, Bolivia (10.5. - 15.5.2010)
Linoleum Festival of Contemporary Animation & Media-Art Moscow, Russia
Retrospective Bady Minck (11.12. - 13.12.2009)
frame[o]ut Festival, Wien, Austria (3.7. - 29.08.2009)
Hamburger Ostertöne Hamburg, Germany (10.4. – 13.4.2009)
Diagonale Festival of Austrian Film Graz, Austria (17.3. - 22.3.2009)
MUSEEK Music Video Festival, Sankt-Peterburg, Russia (14.11. - 23.11.2008)
Oberammergauer Filmtage Germany (3.10.2008)
Cadore Doc Film Festival, Pieve di Cadore, Italy (1.8. - 5.8.2008)
IO Isabella International Film Week [Opening Film] Maratea, Italy (29.7. - 3.8.2008)
Animator International Film Festival Poznan, Poland
Retrospective Bady Minck (7.7. - 12.7.2008)
BAFF Busto Arsizio Film Festival Italy (5.4. - 12.4.2008)
Int'l Short & Independent Film Festival Dhaka, Bangladesh (14.2. - 22.2.2008)
Int'l Film Festival of Kerala Thiruvananthapuram, India (7.12. - 14.12.2007)
Journées du Film Luxembourgeois (10.11. - 28.11.2007)
Festival du Court Métrage d'Animation de Neufchâteau (10.11. - 17.11.2007)
Festival Wien Modern (1.11. - 1.12.2007)
Asiana Int'l Short Film Festival Seoul (1.11. - 6.11.2007)
Semana Internacional de Cine de Valladolid (26.10. – 3.11.2007)
Tindirindis Int'l Animation Film Festival Vilnius, Lithuania
(25.10. - 28.10.2007)
Festival Octobre Rouge Esch-sur-Alzette (19.10.2007)
Festival du Nouveau Cinéma de Montréal (10.10. - 21.10.2007)
Biennale di Venezia (4.10. - 13.10.2007)
Asolo Art Film Festival (24.9. - 26.9.2007)
Antimatter Underground Film Festival Victoria, Canada
(21.9. - 29.9.2007)
Int'l Short Film Festival Drama, Greece (16.9. - 22.9.2007)
International Festival of New Film Split (15.9. - 22.9.2007)
Milano Doc Festival (12.9. - 30.9.2007)
Linoleum Festival of Alternative Animation Moscow
(15.8. - 18.8.2007)
DokuFest Int'l Documentary & Short Film Festival Prizren, Kosovo (6.8. - 12.8.2007)
Brisbane International Film Festival (2.8. - 12.8.2007)
Festival Latinoamericano de Cortometrajes Barinas, Venezuela (26.7. - 2.8.2007)
Festival Cinéfleuve - Kino im Fluss, Liège (30.6. - 24.7.2007)
      Retrospective Bady Minck, Carpe Diem Liège (15.7.2007)
Festival Cinéfleuve - Kino im Fluss, Charleroi (30.6. - 24.7.2007)
      Retrospective Bady Minck, BSP Charleroi (11.7.2007)
Festival int'l du documentaire de Marseille (4.7. - 9.7.2007)
Festival Cinéfleuve - Kino im Fluss, Trier (30.6. - 24.7. 2007)
      Retrospective Bady Minck, Broadway Kino Trier (5.7. - 6.7.2007)
Artfilm Int'l Film Festival Trencianske Teplice (22.6. - 30.6.2007)
Festival de Cine de Huesca European Forum (7.6. - 16.6.2007)
Int'l Cinema & Music Festival of Ashdod, Israel (26.5. - 30.5.2007)
Crossing Europe Film Festival Linz (24.4. - 29.4.2007)
Diagonale Festival of Austrian Film Graz (19.3. - 25.3.2007)
International Film Festival Rotterdam (24.1. - 4.2.2007)
Prix UIP Short Film Nominee for the European Film Awards

Screenings (21)
Metrokino "Käpt'n Musik" program by Asifa Austria (29.1.2010)
Metrokino "Käpt'n Musik" program by Asifa Austria (19.1.2010)
Schloss Wolkersdorf Asifa Austria in cooperation with Fluss
Program "Ton im Animationsfilm" curated by Stefan Stratil (8.8.2009)
Ostertöne Laeiszhalle Hamburg "Free Radicals" (12.4.2009)
Chelsea Art Museum New York Special Program Bady Minck (10.4.2009)
Lincoln Center New York City "Free Radicals" (4.4.2009)
Centre Culturel Bertrange (23.1.2009)
Light Cone Preview Show Paris (September 2008)
Palais des Beaux Arts Bruxelles "Free Radicals" (14.4.2008)
Philharmonie Luxembourg "Free Radicals" (13.4.2008)
Exhibition Heiligenkreuzerhof Wien "With their own eyes" (9.4. - 30.7.2008)
Seminar Kreative Lösungen für nachhaltige Entwicklung Wien (1.3. - 2.3.2008)
Rodina Kinoteatr St. Petersburg Showcase Bady Minck (12.12.2007)
Wien Modern Opening Night "Free Radicals" (1.11.2007)
Biennale di Venezia "Free Radicals" (10.10.2007)
National Gallery of Art Washington DC New Avant-Garde Shorts from Austria (1.9.2007)
Centre Georges Pompidou Paris "Demain dès l'aube" (17.5.2007)
Premiere Luxembourg: Cinémathèque Luxembourg (14.5.2007)
Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen Market (7.5.2007)
Cinéma du réel Nyon Film Market (9.3. - 18.3.2007)
Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (9.3.2007)