Campus Magazin Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg 22/23

ANIMATIONSINSTITUT 20 YEARS – 20 PROJECTS
freedom, it will often result in films with navel-gazey
and escapist tendencies – formally, as well as with regard
to the content. This impression crept up on me
when I started to attend animation film festivals. Go
see for yourself ! Questionable filmmaking everywhere!
Heaps of films getting lost in broad visual metaphors.
Films that are formally virtuous, but empty on the inside,
talking to no one but themselves. There is the obvious
and prevalent masturbatory use of digital technology!
Or films that seem to compete to find ever more
labour-intensive ways of production, while completely
losing sight of an engaging story.
tries to do his job, but soon realises that to truly care for
his patients would mean to go way beyond the requirements
and constraints of his official duties. There are
ailments of the body but the most insidious seems to be
this wound within his patients’ soul, incurable by bandages
or medicine: loneliness.
Our ambitious protagonist tries his best. He sits down
with the forgotten people, listens to their stories, plays
chess, and watches TV with them. But because his job
is not designed to sustain this level of care and because
he cannot withstand the avalanche of need alone, he is
doomed to fail. He cannot save everybody. Ultimately, he
« A director talking about his inner journey while
being a paramedic. That sounds kind of navel-gazey too. »
In this dominion of introversion, I was longing for films
that dive right into the human condition. Real stuff!
Real life! Films like little fragments of wisdom that I can
store on this tiny shelf in my heart and pull out whenever
life confronts me with difficult emotional conundrums.
This breed of films is rare in the world of independent
animation, so I am especially grateful that
366 TAGE (366 DAYS, 2011) exists.
In 366 TAGE, Austrian director Johannes Schiehsl remembers
his time in community service, working as a
paramedic. Our young protagonist in his bright red coat,
carrying the symbol of the red cross, is thrown into the
grey, monotone world of the people in need of an ambulance.
Guided by his meaty, closelipped instructor he
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understands that the silent manner of his chunky supervisor
is by no means the indifference for which he
first mistook it, but instead a protective reaction against
getting lost in caring too much. For empathy is a limited
resource and therefore needs to be spent deliberately
and effectively. This leads us to the film’s conclusion,
in which the instructor shares his secret weapon, helping
him to manage the daily grind: do everything in the
rhythm of the Radetzky March!
Maybe you’re thinking: «A director talking about his
inner journey while being a paramedic. That sounds
kind of navel-gazey too.» You are raising a good point,
wise one. This subject matter could have been another
touchy-feely introspective extravaganza. But Schiehsl