A FILM BY PETER VOLKART - Reck Filmproduktion

T H E F U T U R E O F L I G H T N E S S
By Peter P. Schneider
There are no charter flights to Nanopol. Which is very strange, really. It’s a place that everyone
would like to go to! Because the appeal of Nanopol, on the far side of the 75th parallel,
is that there is no gravity there. The researcher Leschenko dares to journey there on his own.
He hopes that by finding the point of zero gravity in Nanopol, he will be rehabilitated. His
career as a scientist had come to an abrupt end when he was defamed as a swindler by jealous
professional colleagues during the Congress of Pataphysicists and was subsequently
expelled from the Academy.
His stumbling block had been his genius: in a spectacular self-test, he overcame the earth’s
gravity and managed to walk up the wall of a room. Another time, he made himself disappear
entirely: body and soul could not possibly be lighter than when you actually make them
disappear.
Igor Leschenko may be a bold dreamer, but he does not fantasize. He succeeds in turning
whatever he wishes into reality. All the way to the bitter end – to his self-elimination. In
Nanopol he disappears into an unknown parallel universe – terra incognita. He doesn’t
disappear into higher spheres, but dives into a wormhole, into the dark depths of the earth.
He poses the question, „Isn’t home that place where I have not yet been?" as he once noted
in his diary during his travels. Leschenko arrives where he always had wanted to be.
For a fleeting moment, pure uncertainty and lightness rule – the end.
But then we see the body of the scientist sitting in a run-down den. The scenery appears
somewhat dismal, but Leschenko himself is quite relaxed and not unhappy. There is just one
little thing which this figure in an armchair must get rid of in order to discard all earthly
weight: that Leschenko in his head. A kind nurse helps him. Her injection sends waves of
beautiful music through Leschenko. Through her needle, even old shellac discs release their
melodies.
Peter Volkart discovered the story of the pataphysicist Igor Leschenko through film footage
and photographs which he found by pure coincidence in archives. This strange fellow really
fascinated him. With a patient and loving meticulousness he gathered biographic fragments
about this man from Hermannstadt. Fragments which he had left scattered throughout
half of the world over the course of more than half a century of existence. Slowly these
treasures of photos and film sequences were pieced together into the life story of a romantic
eccentric. A personality as peculiar as he was fearless, who follows his highest goals –
his happiness, really – and, in the course of doing so, experiences peculiar encounters: with
the nightlife in Novosuburbia, with a city on high stilts, with the offshore entertainment centre
Morphopolis or with the island of Subotika and its dwarves who feed themselves through
a funnel on their heads.
Any gaps in this reconstructed life portrait which may have existed between the photos and
films that he found were carefully bridged by Peter Volkart – with subtle colored scenes
made in a décor which he designed himself. With their patina, they perfectly emulate the
world of the scientist, explorer and inventor Leschenko. Volkart „befriended“ Leschenko,
became a scientific expert in the area of Leschenko. In the course of time, he stumbled onto
some peculiar documents which provided him with many a amusing moment, but which
made him doubt his own sanity from time to time. Did these worlds that Leschenko researched,
that he documented with his pictures, really exist? Are the documents he found real?
And should we spectators believe the unbelievable?