The Triumph of the Concern for the Other Man

The renowned anarchist teacher Count Ervin Batthyány reappears 100 years after his death. He tries to put his theories into practice again, as he realises that the world has not turned out as he had expected. He founds a new free school with the help of some like-minded people, and starts teaching a new generation who believe in solidarity and cooperation, rather than a system of oppression. But the ideal of freedom and equality awakens the same fears in the choreographers of power as it did 100 years ago. And after an encouraging start the count and his new friends come up against more and more obstacles.

Do you know what barman pours for spirits? Do you know what drink the barman pours? If your lover pours the drink, it's your destruction, If the drink is fiery, inside it brings illumination. Drink intoxication's drink, be consumed by love! A drop happily seeks its death in the ocean's water. All the world's a bar and things in it merely glasses, Our friend raises his glass for us and we pay the bill, Even wisdom is drunk, descending into stupor, Earth and heaven are drunk, and all the angels too.

White-clad figures in gas masks appear from time to time. They are the Program group. It is presumably the behaviour of these characters - the population - who appear in each other's strange dreams that has triggered the desire of businessmen and politicians to call in foreign help to restore order. They have come with unknown aims, and are doing their work in terror. The film is a chain of surreal dreams, yet the feeling is familiar. We are home.

The Buharovs, as the harbingers of a supra-human world, blend their instinctive cosmos with a kind of quiet poetry to lead the viewer into the Land of Warm Waters and onwards to new dimensions of storytelling.

Oneheadword Protection uses stop-motion animation techniques throughout, irrespective of whether a scene features objects, cardboard cut-outs or human bodies. This gives the film a febrile, panicky rhythm. An all-important sense of play and dressing-up runs throughout, yet the energies this 'playing' unleash are far from innocuous. (Re:Voir)

Hotel Tubu (2002) is a good introduction to the Buharov’s cinema. A relatively early work, its slapstick playfulness and improvised fancy dress party aesthetic might at first suggest a wilful exercise in absurdity for its own sake. Yet this is tempered by a rather wistful lyricism, which combines with the haunting elusiveness that accompanies the first viewing of many Buharov films, an unease not dissimilar to trying to recall a dream that only presents itself in fragments. This stems largely from trying to process the complex layers of impressions that it offers within a very condensed running time. It shows the struggle between three “cosmos workers,” beings whose task is to wait for ideas too big to be conceived by human brains to be channelled from the universe.