Shānzhài Screens

In this night-time road movie, Paul Heintz pursues his work on the edge of reality (Foyers, FID 2018), delving deep into fantasies and their sometimes ambivalent virtues, the better to undo the coercive power of which they are sometimes also the instrument. Here we’re with three friends one hot summer’s evening somewhere in Saudi Arabia. A city, and in the distance, a monumental fountain, a phallic spurt if ever there was one. And as we begin to make out its gushing spray of water from afar, to alleviate their boredom, the three young women embark on a verbal joust with, at its heart, the word nafura.

Filmmaker Paul Heintz sets off in search of Winston Smith. When he publishes a classified advert in the English newspaper The Sun searching for namesakes of the hero of George Orwell’s novel 1984, he causes a collision between fiction and reality. The daily life of these illustrious strangers becomes dystopian, absorbed by the imagination of each and every one of us.

Shot quickly in a break of film shooting

They do accounting, handle human-resources matters and run sales for a car dealership. They answer the phone, peck at their keyboards, organize meetings and take lunch breaks. They learn to type faster, speak better, project self-confidence. With their pay, they buy fancy vacations or giant pythons. What’s going on in this (almost) ordinary company? In this drily funny short, Paul Heintz slowly sows doubts, highlighting the absurdity of corporate work. To what extent can fiction contaminate reality? Without editorializing, the artist reveals the modern working world for the strange carnival ride that it is.

A slow movement through a residential neighbourhood, with empty streets, plain facades, as though artificial. A man recounts his story about the first time, attraction, desire, dizziness of the ignition, forgetfulness, complete blackout. The monologue is composed from transcriptions of psychotherapeutic sessions with arsonists, from the period 1960-1980.