Catalogue > At random

A short absurd fairy tale taking place on a historical site of modernism, with references to Lewis Caroll and George Lucas. A young man enters a futuristic building, the headquarters of the Communist Party of France PCF in Paris. In the subterraneous grand assembly hall he encounters relics of the past that shaped/described history. Simultaneously on the roof of the building a hooded figure scans the premises` structure while down below the white concrete overground dome of the hall transforms into the moon. Alice in Wonderland in a conflictive version - playing out a poetic discourse on surrealism & socialism where science fiction, architecture, and literature are dialectically intertwined with the human psyche. The title Alice.M relates phonetically as "alism" to the ending of certain "ism" terms, such as e.g. "surrealism", "socialism", "idealism", "dualism".

Philipp Lachenmann (*1963 Munich, lives in Berlin) studied filmmaking at Munich?s Academy for Film and Television and art history and philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilians University. He received a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Program (DAAD) for New York in 1998 and in 2003 a grant for the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles. From 2000 to 2003 he was awarded a post-graduate fellowship at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM), and several travel & work grants. Selected exhibitions include the Goethe Institute Paris, the Museum K21 Düsseldorf, the Transmediale Berlin, the Reina Sofia Madrid, the Kunst-Werke Berlin, the Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin, and the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg. Screenings at MIT Short Film Festival Boston, IFFR International Filmfestival Rotterdam, SIFF Seattle International Film Festival, SFIFF San Francisco International Film Festival, NYFF New York Film Festival, HKIFF Hongkong International Film Festival. For 2012 Lachenmann received a one year grant at the Villa Massimo in Rome.