This is the first film of Michael Haneke who later went on to make BENNY\'S VIDEO, THE PIANO TEACHER, FUNNY GAMES and HIDDEN amongst many others. Right from the very beginning he had a visionary style, which is clear in this film.
This film remains one of the most powerful he has ever done, but it hasn\'t been screened much because he hadn\'t gained international recognition yet when he made it...and its stunning. Aesthetically it might be the most perfect film he has ever made.
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 18th
THE SEVENTH CONTINENT (Der Siebente Kontinent) 1989
Directed by Michael Haneke
104 minutes
In German with English subtitles
The Seventh Continent is a 1989 Austrian film directed by Michael Haneke. It is Haneke\'s debut feature film, inspired by a true story of a family that committed suicide. The film chronicles the last years of the Austrian middle class family. A family, consisting of an Georg, an engineer, his wife Anna, an optician, and their young daughter, Eva, which seems to lead a routine urban middle-class lives suddenly decides to kill themselves without any apparent reason. The film only implies some kind of their nervous depression and isolation in modern repetitive life.
Arguably, no greater cinematic interpreter of alienation exists in the world today than Austrian director Michael Haneke. Haneke shows us characters whose response to the world around them has deadened, people who have forgotten how to feel, how to love, how to care. The Seventh Continent, the first film of the trilogy that, with Benny\'s Video (1992) and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994), depicts what Haneke has called \"my country\'s emotional glaciation.\"
Depicting ritualistic actions like counting of money at a supermarket, the distractions of television, the meaninglessness of work, the film reflects the powerlessness and isolation of people in modern society. In the absence of a spiritual core, without the possibility of meaningful action, the family sinks deeper into an abyss, unraveling and discarding the tightly woven structures of their life. Haneke chronicles a family enslaved to the structures they have created, operating in a morass of emotional vacuity. The Seventh Continent is a ruthlessly intelligent film that burns its way into your psyche, leaving an indelible mark that will forever haunt your dreams.
Ciné INTERZONE - wouldn\'t you?
Filmhuis Cavia
Van Hallstraat 52-B
Time: 20:30
Lokatie
Van Hallstraat 52-B Amsterdam
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