HHK Schoenherr

An experimental biopic that explores the life of Swiss writer Robert Walser. The film deliberately avoids a linear narrative structure and approaches Walser more in the form of a poetic meditation on the life of a poet. Walser is portrayed as a role model for the film's author, who has radically distanced himself from or rejected the grammar and rhetoric of conventional film more than his colleagues.

"Actions of Indication is an intermission film, which means it is a film for the intermissions in movie theaters. Get the message: FILM is caviar like BASKIN ROBBINS is ice cream." (HHK)

The film Autoportrait is made up of four parts: Part 1: Search, Part 2: Work, Part 3: Daydream, Part 4: Family. Each of the parts can be shown as a self-contained film.

The film was found in the estate of HHK Schoenherr and digitized as part of the "Swiss Film Experiments" research project. The title is taken from the label on the film canister. The film does not appear on any HHK Schoenherr filmography. The attribution to HHK Schoenherr's films is questionable.

A short film by HHK Schoenherr

Experimental film with a doll.

As a word, play stands for playing, playful, giving full play to your imagination, play-acting style, play at passion, playground, manner of playing, playing for time, phase of play, playing a joke, play document, playing field, playroom, and everything that has to do with film, the film stock, with its color and black/white. Unexposed, overexposed and double-and multiple-exposed film, waste material and the creations of fancy.

"This idyll was made for a Dracula film project by Ernst Schmidt of Vienna, who wrote to various European filmmakers in order to produce a bigger film with their participation." (HHK)

The first film made in black-and-white. Made using my own printing technique. Beforehand: This film, which is basically romantic or, even more, a fairy tale film, with carriages, horses, handmade glass lanterns, as solemn as a merry wedding, with an old Rolls Royce standing at a slant completely drunk and whose magnificent big headlights sit crooked on its fenders. An atmosphere of dancing around and returning and light, lamps and life. A film that even takes its audience to Paris, past the Louvre and into the nights of the boulevards; again and again, light, lamps and life. The film is light-hearted: the sonorous tone indicates a change, difficult to under-stand, a threat or do I hear right? Again and again, the streets, the domes of the churches, the palace wings of the Louvre, the National Library and the small opening in the wall at the Palace Mazarin which leads to the small park with its Picasso statue. What happens in Paris?

Emmental is lovely. To us, it looks like something out of a picture book. And this kind of landscape always has a history. And many good artists come from this landscape. And then the cows in this landscape. In Emmental, there are cows that look at passers-by sweetly, with big, pure cow eyes--and gaze after them. Long... In Emmental, each hill has a north side and a warm, beautiful south side. The filmmaker and sheep farmer, Guido Haas, live on the north side of a hill in Emmental, which is called Cold Ground and his house lies low in the valley and is a real Emmental house, with a raised driveway to the barn and a big shingle roof on top. Spiteful, rich neighbors must have gotten the idea of calling it Foxhole.

"In Germany, I bought an old 35mm Debrie camera. I spent several weeks working with this camera and found that its mechanics were marvelously thought out and that the way the camera was made was proof of the skilled craftsmanship back then. I developed a procedure which also allowed me to use the camera as a printing machine. The printing process is not so different from the filming process, as far as the transport of the film goes . . . It was a lot of fun to try to exhaust the possibilities of the Debrie. It was not only the mechanics that were exciting, like the works of a wonderful old clock, but the numerous possibilities for the realization of the second part of the film, too. This consists mainly of what has already been shot, but offers at least 50% more experimental manipulations in the printed part." (HHK)

The film was realized according to the formulaic concept "TAM 4/71."

A short film by Raphaela Schoenherr with HHK Schoenherr.

"I wanted to make a portrait of three artists that would show them by primarily using their surroundings. Therefore, the artists themselves would not be in the picture but rooms, objects, where they walk to and where they drive, and personal and impersonal things around the artists would be described. Through the rhythm of the takes, I tried to achieve a poetic flow that would smoothly compliment their personalities. I told myself at the time that pictures and the rhythm of the pictures should be enough to characterize the three." (HHK)

"This film is an attempt in focusing. I visited Kurt Kren in Vienna. (Kurt Kren is considered to be the father of the European underground film.) Kurt Showed me lots of documents, papers and letters, all about the fights he had with many restaurant owners in Vienna. But the film I made is not about these fights; I tried to focus on the eye of the hurricane, the eye of Kurt Kren. Is this Kurt Kren or isn't it?" (HHK)

"Location: a ballet company, Mrs. Cordua training alone, training together with another person, head exercises, body exercises, leg and arm exercises, supporting herself, working in the ballet room, taking off her makeup in the dressing room, undressing, washing herself carefully, treating all of the sweaty places of her body (armpits, anus, genitalia), getting dressed, opera house corridors, canteen, driving through the city, typical buildings, shops, factory complexes on the way; apartment—opera house and back, her husband reading the newspaper, sitting, lying down, working, smoking, cooking potatoes, eating potatoes, opening the mail, drinking coffee, filming, caring for feat, mouth, while saying something amusing, hand movement (beheading gesture meaning it is finished), a TV film, dancer relaxing in private, smoking, discussing, disparaging, a TV film, drinking tea, the end: that certain shine in Mrs. Cordua's eyes!" (HHK)