running sushi (film)

what the aquarium saw

“How should we explain the discrepancy between people’s attitude toward the inner and outer life? Why is it so sharp?” In the contemporary Manga household, traversed by the slowly rolling conveyor belt of the raw fish snacks of everyday life, the descendants of Adam and Eve cower in eponymous costume under dispassionate, detached fish-like eyes. The visual focus is mainly somewhere under the non-existent ceiling of this claustrophobic yet boundless room. It is an angle usually only experienced when close to death. But these animated contemporaries, in not wholly conjugal clinch, presumably aren’t mortal. They are too artificial for that, and too naked. Yet even their nakedness: what is it exactly? Not innocent; not arousing; the suitable flesh-coloured costume for close combat. Domestic life flourishes on a neon green artificial lawn. Even more artificial than the modern Asiatic style household: an impossible exterior creeps into the interior of the self-infatuated contact athletes.

i think that depth is a myth

Green Box; that would be the metaphor for the new life on the surface – if it weren’t so flat. How should I paint my kitchen? Every day the Green Box presents you with a different room, deer in back lighting, raw graffiti, and a tiled barrel vault for the home disco. You are on TV yourself or the aquarium watches you. Viewed through an aquarium everything is inside and everybody is at his or her own mercy. With hyperventilation screeching helplessly over the grotesque surface of all intimacies, a homage to Donald and Tweety, these animated heroes are without a private life, and without “private parts”. The comic figure in us laughs at the genitals. Anna Freud would never have dreamed of such a thing…

text: katherina zakravsky

Based on the stage piece Running Sushi by Liquid Loft
Beta SP, DVD 28 min
(c) 2008

Best innovative experimental-, animation and shortfilm at Diagonale –
Festival des österreichischen Films 2008

Pre-Premiere March 5th 2008 Galerie Knoll
Vienna Premiere at Diagonale Festival des österreichischen Films 2008

Starring: Stephanie Cumming Johnny Schoofs
Story and Choreography: Chris Haring in collaboration with the performers
Text: Stephanie Cumming, Anna Freud, Johnny Schoofs
Directed by: Mara Mattuschka Chris Haring
Director of photography: Sepp Nermuth
Sound / Sound Concept: Glim (Andreas Berger)
Light: Werner Stibitz Marcus Novotny Assistant Director Christoph Parzer 3D roomdesign Sepp Nermuth Mara Mattuschka Editing, Aftereffects Mara Mattuschka Additional Voices David Kleinl Props Mathias Lenz
Continuity: Evgenia Anyebe
Thanks to: Thomas Jelinek

Supported by: Innovative Film Austria / BMUKK Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien
Distribution: sixpack film

credits

Screenings

 

05.06.19
Metrokino Kulturhaus / Filmarchiv Austria

06.04.19
Wand5 / Filmwinter

08.08.14
espressofilm Impulstanz Special Liquid Loft, Vienna, Austria

07.09.13
Wand 5, Stuttgart, Germany

06.06.13
FILMFABRIK/Spielboden, Dornbirn, Austria

27.01.11
Frankfurt – Mal Seh’n Kino

24.11.10 – 28.11.10 
Bukarest – Intern. Experimental Film Festival

03.11.10
Wien proFRAU Austrian Artists in Minsk

22.07.10
Wroclaw 10 New Horizons Int. Film Festival

25.06.10
New York Anthology Film Archives, Mara Mattuschka Special

01.03.10
Chennai Women’s Festival

03.12.09
Malmö Biograf Panora

06.11.09
Szczecin Kana Theatre Centre

12.09.09
Split Festival of New Film and Video

10.09.09
Seoul EXis

01.07.09
Cinedans Amsterdam

26.06.09
La Rochelle Int Film Festival

17.06.09
Hot Springs Arkansas Underground

12.06.09
Tokyo Inst. Culturel Franco-Japonais Hors Pistes

10.06.09
Seoul EXis

02.06.09
Hamburg 25. Int. Kurzfilm Festival

05.05.09
Wroclaw Int. Media Art Biennale

23.04.09
San Francisco 09 – Golden Gate Award Int.

27.03.09
Paris Hors Pistes Int. Medium-Length

17.03.09
Diagonale Festival des österr. Films, Personale Mara Mattuschka

22.01.09
Stuttgart Wand 5, 22. Filmwinter

26.04.08
Crossing Europe, Linz

02.04.08
Diagonale Festival des Österr. Films, Graz

05.03.08
Galerie Knoll, Wien

 

dates