Digital Sushi
On January 22nd there will be the first filmfestival of my uni: digital sushi. There some short films which were created by students will be screened. Among them is The Robbery which I made in 2003 at Creative Media, Melbourne.
The festival is located in the Conrad Sohm club, Dornbirn, Austria. Entrance time is from 8 pm and it will start at around 9 pm with a party afterwards. The cost is 5 Euros minimum, the proceeds will be distributed to Licht ins Dunkel, an organization for social projects.
So if you feel like it and you are around then, just come over. I am sure it's gonna be a nice evening. And, hey, it's the Austria - actually the Europe premiere!
Eat Drink Man Woman
Having arrived from Australia life in Europe became a wedding marathon - so Yuki and me, we saw a lot within one month. Stop. Step by step:
The first week in Munich was rather slow and less sensational as it really took a whole week to get over the jetlag.
After that we were able to look around in Munich a little bit before we went on our way to Berlin for the two main reasons: first to finally meet my niece Leonie who was born in November last year while I was in Australia, and second ...
Two Trips in Wintertime
approaching the Grampians National Park
Yuki and me went to Adelaide for four days. It is a very nice city in South Australia, about 10 hours by bus from Melbourne. The city is very calm, with a lot of green. There are some really nice vineries in the area around. If Melbourne is relaxed compared to Sydney, Adelaide really is slow - people have time and are probably the most friendly type of people in all places I have been visiting so far here in Australia. I forgot to bring my camera so there are no pictures now.
Some weeks ago I went to the Great Ocean Road and the Grampians again. Pretty much the same route, but in three instead of five days. Although it is winter here we once again had a very nice time.
Weißwurstfrühstück
Dekadenz deluxe: Weißwurstfrühstück (white saussage breakfast) with Erdinger Weißbier (beer brewed from wheat), Brez´n (pretzels) and Händlmaier Senf (sweet mustard) down under - to show those Australian and Japanese guys how to wake up your stomach without using Vegemite or rice balls. Naoya, the Japanese gentleman in this picture, was very enthusiastic about it. I am surprised.
Going Home: Wurst-Origami für Deutschland!
From 20th of August we, that is Yuki and me, are on our way to Germany via Melbourne-Singapore-Frankfurt-Munich and will arrive some time in the morning of the 21st, probably facing a nice jetlag.
For everyone who is interested in how Japanese and German culture works in combination I recommend you warmly this do-it-yourself Wurst-Origami crash course. Have fun!
To everyone I know here in Australia thank you very much - it was a great great year since I arrived on July 18th 2002! I hope we will meet sometime somewhere in the world. If you are going to come to Germany, or let´s say Europe, just let me know and we can catch up. You are all most welcome.
To everyone »back there at home«: I am looking very much forward to meet you again very soon and to enjoy the rest of the summer with you! As soon as we recovered from the flight you will probably meet us in the beergarden or at a lake or somewhere. So see you soon!
American Movie
Filmmaker Mark Borchardt (right) and executive producer Uncle Bill.
This film documents the making of "Northwestern". The filmmaker Mark Borchardt, who is fascinated by the idea of making movies since his childhood (his favorite films are "Night of the Living Dead" and "The Seventh Seal"), dreams of making a full feature length film after a few short horror flicks he did. The documentary starts showing him looking through his mail - full of bills - until he stops, saying: "Your AT&T Universal Card has arrived?! Oh God, Kick-fucking-ass, I got a Master Card!" From this moment everything goes wrong:
Melbourne International Film Festival
Once again the Melbourne International Film Festival is screening a very nice and special programme of films you can´t see at the big screen usually. I went to a few of those during this 52nd festival.
The "animation shorts programme #1" showed films like the British Aardman "Presentators" (three really great characters) and "Angry Kid" (not the most secret tip), "Atama Yama" by Koji Yamamura (the story is about a man who drowns in a pond located on his own head - weird and in a very nice style) or "Penguin Parade" (too slow, too long and too predictable for me - which is too bad for all the hard work for this stop motion animation). "I´m A star" (see image above) is a rather weird Austrian animation/collage about a macholike guy who had seen better days. "Flat" is a stop motion animation about the happenings in an appartment building - I really like the style. "Mother Tongue" is a piece about a Korean girl and her lost mother tongue (nice style, but I doubt that the audience really cares about the character). "Pan With Us" is a nice experimental work based on a poem by Robert Frost in a style I have not seen before throughout a whole piece. The real environment becomes part of the aninmation, or precisely it´s the other way around: the animation becomes part of the real environment. The Russian animation "Hash" tells the story of the three little pigs including some unexpected happenings. "The Pirate" is a very nice Czech animation about a pirate whose centre of interest is the bottle (of rum) and who has to get over some adverse conditions to keep his lifestyle. Here and there a bit too long, but alltogether very nice. The animations shorts programme finished with "Mood Motions", a great piece about how hard life can be when you are an abstract. Simple, funny, good.
The Robbery
This is the protagonist of my new animation »The Robbery«. Handdrawn again, because I prefer the style to vector graphics. It was the major project here during my stay at Creative Media, RMIT university, Melbourne. The originally planned 2 1/2 minutes grew to a 5 1/2 minutes epos, however, I enjoyed the work - although, as usual, I guess I can´t see it any more for the next few months. If I got the muse then I´d like to change the voices which I am not so happy with - but I just didn´t have enough time left to do so before the due date.
Thanks to Moira Corby, Aaron McLoughlin and Felix Hude (whose advice to "drop every concept which is deep and meaningful" had quite a big influence on this work).
So, please enjoy: »The Robbery«
By the way, I shrinked the filesize of my first animation, Café IMPERIAL to much nicer 10 MB instead of the more than 20 MB before. No quality loss.
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