показ фильма
Бернхарда Залманн «Цоо, или письма не о любви», 2006
In 1922 the Soviet author Viktor Shklovsky emigrated to Berlin where he subsequently wrote his book "Zoo, or Letters Not About Love". In “Zoo”, reflections on being a stranger to Berlin, an appreciation of the city itself, and cultural and sociological analyses develop from a love affair asymmetrically communicated in letter form.
In his documentary film Sallmann gives Shklovsky's text the voices of diverse Russians living in Berlin who recite pieces from the letters. The recited text bounces off narrow, miniaturised images and reveals divisions, reflections and converging structures in their composition. In "After Finitude" Quentin Meillassoux writes, "The past is unpredictable", and it is this that Sallmann too seems to be thinking when he combines the descriptions and perceptions of a 1920s Berlin with scenes from today's, thus undermining the factuality of the past. With this film, Sallmann creates a speculative déjà vu which, from a retro-formalist perspective, does not pursue the mere updating of the archives, but rather the estrangement of the present.