CoMo No. 22: Germany (February-April, 2024)

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Holdrüholoheuho
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Re: CoMo No. 22: Germany (February, 2024)

Post by Holdrüholoheuho »

wba wrote: Sun Feb 11, 2024 5:39 pm though the listed 30 are just a small sample, the famous tip of the Iceberg, so to speak. :-)
i would like to expand it but sources are scarce to the NMG.
not sure if i can add every film that filmmakers associated with NMG made during (let's say) the second half of the 1960s and very early 1970s.
or what films by filmmakers who are not primarily associated with the NGC, like f.e. Schlöndorff’s Mord und Totschlag (viz ↓↓↓)
Volker Schlöndorff is not usually associated with the New Munich Group, but this early film in his oeuvre embraces the styles and themes typical of the Munich films. Mord und Totschlag was filmed and produced in Munich by Rob Houwer Film, Film- und Fernsehproduktion, the producer of Rudolf Thome’s Galaxis (1967) and Marran Gosov’s films, which belong to the New Munich Group. Schlöndorff is more commonly associated with the New German Cinema as one of its most internationally successful and prolific directors in the 1970s and 1980s.
so, this list is certainly a work in progress, and any possible entry suggestions are welcomed!
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Post by wba »

Yes, as there isn't a clearly identifiable group as the "Oberhausen"-group that signed the famous manifesto, it's difficult to say who should be included and not. I'd say it's useful as an idea of a certain kind of cinema at a certain time, and everybody probably has their own notions when watching the specific films, who might be "in" and who's "out", so to speak.
But these group-things are very difficult, as for example many who signed the Oberhausen manifesto went on to direct hugely divergent films that certainly have nothing much in common between themselves (besides being cinema). And in the worst case, great directors get neglected, because they aren't considered part of some group or such. In the end, every artist is an individual, trying to express himself as best as he can.
There's also the famous bickering and stuff, like Truffaut and Godard having been friends in early days, but later not so much, etc. When I met and talked to people like Roger Fritz, Eckhart Schmidt or Rudolf Thome, they seemed very reluctant to talk about their colleagues, peers, friends in the past (there's supposed to have been some major break in the friendship between say Rudolf Thome, Eckhart Schmidt and Klaus Lemke, who used to hang out together [most famously at the home of Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet, where those two French artists working in Germany would cook spaghetti for the three youths], support each other and make plans for future films in the early 60s in Munich, and who all went to have long and distinctive but very much seperate careers later). One just doesn't know how much of it all is gossip, and what actually happened. Also many of these filmmakers has literary aspirations as well, some of them published novels, some didn't but wanted to. There's also people like director Uwe Brandner, who lived and studied in Munich in the early 60s, worked on some early shorts of Werner Herzog (he made for example the music for two of Werner Hezog's two short films), but also directed his own films and worked on films with other filmmakers. During that time he was earning money as a journalist and jazz musician, but after 1968 he became known as a writer (he published some novels and stuff) as well as a successful director of feature films who co-founded a now famous film festival as well as co-founded the "Filmverlag der Autoren" at the beginning of the 1970s. In the 60s he was married to Karin Brandner, a nowadays completely forgotten filmmaker herself, but apparently only for a short time, as Mrs. Brandner became Mrs. Thome, when she married Rudolf Thome at some point in the late 60s/early 70s.
All I want to say is that the personal and professional lives of many filmmakers (who weren't mere directors, but were often into various artistic endeavors) from that era were intertwined in multiple ways and while many might have been friends or at least on friendly terms with each other, there must have surely been a hell of a lot of antagonism as well - over who was getting money for which films, whose films were commercially successful and whose weren't, who was invited to festivals and who wasn't, who got a contract with a certain producer and who didn't, etc. etc. etc. There were really so so many extremely talented people trying to break into or keep directing their films in West Germany during the 1960s and 1970s, while the whole industry was in a perpetual downward spiral, quickly disintegrating to the point that by the early 1970s I'd say there wasn't an actual, functioning film industry in West Germany anymore, and an actual history of all those filmmakers at that time hasn't been written at all.

So it's not just those 30 films by those 4 or 5 directors you listed that are the tip of the Iceberg for what those specific filmmakers were shooting at the time (I could give you a list of a few more films they made at that time, but my informations are also limited), but more broadly speaking that all of the people trying to make films in the 60s in Munich knew each other by some association or another, and even the whole of Germany can appear like a small village, when you've entered those circles were films are discussed and made, so that as one thing leads to another, German film history is really like a trip down the rabbit hole, where one continually bumps into a great "unknown" filmmaker after another.

It's really a can of worms, and I'd definitely suggest that, as you watch more and more films from people working in or around Munich at that time, you develop your own ideas about who is supposed to belong into what group and who is making what kind of films, and who is envious and jealous of someone else - and that you deeply distrust any writings on German film history and who is supposed to have been influential and who wasn't.
By the early 1970s there were hundreds of people trying to regularly direct films in Germany and make some kind of living with it, while the chances of "making it" were very slim, so basically everybody was stepping on each other's toes all of the time.


Some great filmmakers working in West Germany during the 1960s and/or 1970s that I enjoy and would recommend looking into are:
Franz Winzentsen
Ernst Hofbauer
Harun Farocki
Kurt Nachmann
Marran Gosov
Hubert Frank
Peter Zadek
Rolf Thiele
Adrian Hoven
Will Tremper
Robert van Ackeren
Rudolf Thome
Herbert Achternbusch
Franz Marischka
Claudia von Alemann
Helke Sander
Eckhart Schmidt
Jean-Marie Straub
Klaus Lemke
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
George Moorse
Gustav Ehmck
Michael Klier
Ulli Lommel
Ulrich Schamoni
Helma Sanders-Brahms
Peter Schamoni
Herbert Vesely
Ula Stöckl
Alexander Kluge
Helmut Förnbacher
Werner Herzog
Roland Klick
Birgit Hein
Wilhelm Hein
Niklaus Schilling
Rolf Olsen
Michael Pfleghar
Heinz Emigholz
Elfi Mikesch
Johannes Schaaf


And some that are supposed to be interesting but I personally know little about:
Zbynek Brynych
Eberhard Schröder
Klaus Wyborny
Jan Nemec
Haro Senft
Edwin Zbonek
Reinhard Hauff
Theodor Kotulla
Volker Schlöndorff
Monika Treut
Peter Lilienthal
Wim Wenders
Daniel Schmid
Hark Bohm
Uwe Brandner
Hans-Jürgen Pohland
Sohrab Shahid Saless
Vlado Kristl
Hans-Jürgen Syberberg
Hans Rolf Strobel
Heinrich Tichawsky
Werner Schroeter
Michael Verhoeven
Wolfgang Urchs
Edgar Reitz
Margarethe von Trotta
Peter Nestler
Franz Josef Spieker
May Spils
Ferdinand Khittl
Christian Doermer
Hellmuth Costard
Rosa von Praunheim

And that's just the tip of the Iceberg. ;-)
Last edited by wba on Tue Feb 13, 2024 9:18 pm, edited 3 times in total.
"I too am a child burned by future experiences, fallen back on myself and already suspecting the certainty that in the end only those will prove benevolent who believe in nothing." – Marran Gosov
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Post by Holdrüholoheuho »

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THE PARALLEL STREET (Ferdinand Khittl, 1962) #CoMoGermany
In a Kafka room, five Ionesco characters sit in a Sartre situation and plague themselves with a Camus problem.
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In 1962, at the eighth iteration of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, West German filmmaker Ferdinand Khittl (1924–1976) publicly read the document that would become known as the Oberhausen Manifesto. Four months later, Khittl released a feature-length film, Die Parallelstraße (The Parallel Street, 1962), an “unjustifiably neglected tour de force” of the Young German Cinema.

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Post by Holdrüholoheuho »

if anyone wonders about the provenance of some of the pics above ↑↑↑ it's from...

"…SPIRIT AND A LITTLE LUCK" (Ulrich Schamoni, 1965) #CoMoGermany
30-minute documentary commissioned by ZDF in the "Filmforum" series, as a contribution to the situation of German film, broadcast on the opening evening of the 1965 Berlin Film Festival: An ironic look at the people of Oberhausen, the representatives of the various sectors and generations, including Alexander Kluge, Enno Patalas, Ulrich Gregor, Uwe Nettelbeck, Ferdinand Khittl, Vlado Kristl, Artur Brauner, Haro Senft, Franz-Josef Spieker, Rudolf Noelte, etc.
yes, this hilarious doc (highly recommended!) gives voice to (among others) the aforementioned critic ↑↑↑↑↑↑ Enno Patalas who (seems like) coined the term “New Munich Group” (Neue Münchner Gruppe, NMG) — a common label for “Schwabingers” (the antipodes of “Oberhauseners”)...
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but the erudite insiders are not the only ones who get the voice in the film, Vox Populi is also head...
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well, it's 1965, and Papas Kino is still kicking (and is very skeptical about the future)...
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these old farts perceive not only auteur film but also (intellectually oriented) film criticism as pointless...
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fortunately enough, (as opposed to these old farts) the old devilish Catholic Church was very positive about the prospects of the newly emerging New German Cinema (btw. notice below ↓↓↓ the all-encompassing term “Obermünchhausener” that dissolves the (Enno Patalas's) Schwabinger-vs.-Oberhausener false dichotomy)...
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AMEN!
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Post by wba »

Wow, that looks exceptional! Need to watch that (and more films by Ulrich Schamoni!).
Obermünchhausener! What a term! I'm still laughing! It's so fitting, though...

Coincidentally, I went to one of my local libraries yesterday in the evening after work, in order to implement what is called "Fernleihe" in the library system in Germany, which means getting books from other libraries (for a small fee - currently 2€), to your library, so that you can read stuff your library doesn't have. I did this for the first time in my life, cause I wanted to get my hands on a novel by Ulrich Schamoni, which he wrote when he was 19, which was then published in 1962, and immediately "confiscated/banned" after publication for not being fit for the "youths" to read (it's a bit complicated to explain, as my English isn't up to it - but this was a specific way in West Germany for some decades to censor books which were basically deemed "pornographic" or something along the lines). Anyways, now I'll have to wait some three to four weeks, and then I will be able to find out what all the fuss was about. The book is supposed to be heavily autobiographic, and apparently stepped on a lot of people's toes (who were mentioned in it and who were supposedly behind the push to get it banned), and is called "Dein Sohn lässt grüssen" which tranlslates like "Your son sends his regards". According to Ulrich Schamoni, without this book, his filmmaking career would have never begun, as this was apparently the seed (of unrest), that made his wondrous filmography bloom, so to speak.
"I too am a child burned by future experiences, fallen back on myself and already suspecting the certainty that in the end only those will prove benevolent who believe in nothing." – Marran Gosov
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Post by wba »

Here's a trailer of my favorite film by Ulrich Schamoni (it's also my favorite cause it's the only one of his I have seen so far), one of the peak achievements of cinematic history in my book (in fact, I can hardly think of a film that could possibly be better, cause this one is just sheer perfection). Of course, I'm a bit biased when it comes to German cinema, which I love with a vengeance (of course there's dozens of shitty films being made each year in Germany as well, but who cares, when there's so much gold).

https://vimeo.com/246090355
"I too am a child burned by future experiences, fallen back on myself and already suspecting the certainty that in the end only those will prove benevolent who believe in nothing." – Marran Gosov
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Post by Holdrüholoheuho »

wba wrote: Tue Feb 13, 2024 8:30 am Need to watch that (and more films by Ulrich Schamoni!).
placed it in Res.!
unfortunately, it is the only kg entry by Ulrich with English subs.
i still remember you recommending Eins in the other thread some time ago → https://scfzforum.org/phpBB3/viewtopic. ... 866#p27866
but nothing has changed regarding availability (to those not fully fluent in German) since then.
for now, all i can do is chip in the subs pot — whoever has some GBs to waste, please, contribute too!
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Post by wba »

Wow, great!!! :hearteyes:
I’ll try and grab it asap. :)
Too bad, that’s the only film available by Ulrich with English subs. But that’s the fate of 99% of German cinema: no foreign subs. :(

By chance I have to check (measure and repare) a 35mm-print (maybe from the films‘ original run) of Zbynek Brynych’s “Engel, die ihre Flügel verbrennen“ (“Angels who burn their wings“) today at work. It’s a small world… :lol:

This is one of 3 feature-length films Brynych shot in Munich in 1970 (and all were released within a 5-month-span in West German cinemas in 1970).
Unfortunately it seems like there isn’t even a trailer available online for this rare but beloved cult film (among Brynych-fans here in Germany, at least).
"I too am a child burned by future experiences, fallen back on myself and already suspecting the certainty that in the end only those will prove benevolent who believe in nothing." – Marran Gosov
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Post by wba »

I've also found some films by Franz Winzentsen online, one of my favorite filmmakers, and one of many I forgot to list above. :lol:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 4G9T2Tyiet

Unfortunately no English subs, it seems. Maybe on KG?
"I too am a child burned by future experiences, fallen back on myself and already suspecting the certainty that in the end only those will prove benevolent who believe in nothing." – Marran Gosov
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Post by Holdrüholoheuho »

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images above ↑↑↑ are also from aforementioned ↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑ doc by Ulrich Schamoni.
the person speaking is Frans-Josef Spieker.
never heard of him before and this ↓↓↓ is what i watched now (the rest found on kg awaiting a subtitler — so, please, consider chipping in the pots).

SOUTH IN THE SHADE (Franz-Josef Spieker, 1962) #CoMoGermany
Life in a coastal resort town outside the tourist season.

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https://ray-magazin.at/tempel-der-frust ... f-spieker/
article in German, intro Google-autotranslated ↓↓↓

Temple of Frustrated Dreams: The Disappearance of Franz-Josef Spieker
05/2023| Stephan Eicke

As an assistant to Stanley Kubrick and Douglas Sirk and as a co-signer of the Oberhausen Manifesto and director of the once-popular film “Wilder Reiter GmbH”, he was on everyone's lips in the 1960s. Then he made two flops and fled abroad. Colleagues and former supporters had lost track of him before he allegedly fell victim to a gruesome ritual murder in Bali at the age of 44. With the exception of a ten-minute short film — “South in the Shadows” — none of his works are available on DVD or through media libraries. He would have celebrated his 90th birthday in 2023. Who was this former young hope of German film who has become a phantom?
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Post by wba »

Yes, Spieker is somewhat of a dark horse, but most who have seen WILDER REITER GmbH seem to enjoy it. He's not completely unknown and forgotten though - but his films haven't had proper releases and there doesn't seem to have been some surge of interest for him or his work in recent decades (like there has been for Zbynek Brynych, Roger Fritz and some others). Haven't seen anything myself, yet.
Didn't know about the ritual murder! :-o

Thanks for the link to the article!!

EDIT: Wow, that's actually quite a big article in one of the few big commercial German language film magazines. Might be a first for Spieker in decades.
"I too am a child burned by future experiences, fallen back on myself and already suspecting the certainty that in the end only those will prove benevolent who believe in nothing." – Marran Gosov
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Post by Holdrüholoheuho »

wba wrote: Tue Feb 13, 2024 7:46 pm Haven't seen
placed the short in Res. too
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Post by Holdrüholoheuho »

THE PORTRAIT (May Spils, 1966) #CoMoGermany
In 1965, May Spils went to the short film festival in Oberhausen, watched all the short films there from morning to evening, and summed up after a week: “What the boys are doing there, I can do that too.” She took over the farm near Bremen that she had inherited from her grandfather and wrote the script for The Portrait with herself in the lead role.
The failure of an act of artistic creation. Despite receiving instructions from off-camera, a young woman fails to paint a self-portrait.
i.e., “Schwabinger” May Spils mimicking “Oberhauseners”, cat included, with Eng subs ↓↓↓
https://youtu.be/jOx5DQoxMCU?si=yQWUOqQwCgpUpPv2
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Post by Holdrüholoheuho »

MR. DAFF IS SHOOTING A FILM (Klaus Georgi, 1981) #CoMoGermany

meta-oddity from the Soviet Block Germany about a paranoid bus driver and the deceptive power of a movie camera.
no language ↓↓↓
https://youtu.be/xHv183Ju61g?si=NNCk9HrzP45zv_3L
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Post by Holdrüholoheuho »

YOU AND ME (Karsten Krause, 2010) #CoMoGermany
A woman is walking towards her husband's camera for four decades.
four decades of unwavering (marital) male gaze objectification.
visual ode on a long-lasting marital subservience accompanied by a poetic verbalization of the intimate (extramarital) encounters of a woman with a married man; e.e. cummings (may i feel said he) → https://allpoetry.com/may-i-feel-said-he

https://vimeo.com/37521147
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Post by sally »

helen of troy - manfred noa (1924) #CoMoGermany

this was fun, gorgeous and sod all those naysayers that are putting it down

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Post by Holdrüholoheuho »

ibid. ↑↓↑↓↑↓
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the fanciest poncho ever seen on screen!
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last but not least, Karel Lamač as Patroclus
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Post by Holdrüholoheuho »

i guess "we" can extend CoMoGER till the end of April...

seen just before the SCFZ limbo:

HIS WIFE, THE UNKNOWN (Benjamin Christensen, 1923) #CoMoGermany
https://scfzforum.org/phpBB3/viewtopic. ... 151#p46151

seen during the SCFZ limbo:

THE GLAMOUR OF THESE DAYS (Wenzel Storch, 1989) #CoMoGermany
A golden glimmer lies over these days,
a glimmer that enchants our world.
Whether we are at home
in the small cosy alleys
or in the turbulence
of the big city streets,
the glamour of these days is everywhere.
We see it with our hearts.
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Holy Mary,
Mother of God
of Abiding Succour and also our Mother,
pray for us,
my friends and benefactors,
and help me to receive
good thoughts for my films.
Amen.
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LENZ (George Moorse, 1971) #CoMoGermany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Mic ... nhold_Lenz
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THE COMPLAINT OF AN EMPRESS (Pina Bausch, 1990) #CoMoGermany
liked it but for some strange reason i didn't capture any stills

THE REALM OF THE SIX DOTS (Hugo Rütters, 1927) #CoMoGermany
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WOMAN IN THE MOON (Fritz Lang, 1929) #CoMoGermany
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GESUALDO: DEATH FOR FIVE VOICES (Werner Herzog, 1995) #CoMoGermany
the same as the previous (belated first viewing of the classic)

THE BATTLE OF HERMANN (Leo König, 1924) #CoMoGermany
without the forum, i started to read "Early Pyrrhonism Or A Blissful Life Without Values?" (by Andrej Kalaš) and "Hellenistic Philosophy" (by A. A. Long), bought two thick volumes of the correspondence of Cicero (gonna read it bit by bit during the upcoming years), and binge-watched the HBO series "Rome" → https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0384766/
so, i assumed it might be a good idea to watch also THE BATTLE OF HERMANN
mistake! this film is horrendous
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Post by rischka »

YAY CoMo is back!
:lboxd: + ICM + :imdb:

ANTIFA 4-EVA

CAUTION: woman having opinions
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Post by Holdrüholoheuho »

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ULRIKE OTTINGER: NOMAD FROM THE LAKE (Brigitte Kramer, 2012) #CoMoGermany

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by the LAKE (in the title) is meant Lake Constance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Constance

on the lake's shore (in the city of Constance), Ulrike was born, and on the lake's island (Reichenau), there is a Church of Saint George (with the old impressive frescoes)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of ... Reichenau)
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pigs from the frescoes made it to the movies...
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on the lake's shore lived Fritz Mühlenweg, a friend of Ulrike's father, who traveled to Mongolia and wrote about his travels (juvenile Ulrike read those accounts)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_M%C3%BChlenweg
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and on the lake's shore, Ulrike started with filmmaking (after she returned from Paris and gave up painting)
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specifically, the film (i adore) LAOCOON & SONS
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It's actually based on a nightmare, a recurring one I had in Paris, shortly before I left.
(In a dream,) I was in my little studio, in the attic in Constance.
There was a fire and all my artwork was burning.
I rang my parents first, but they couldn't help me.
Back then I had a little, red toy telephone.
Then I pick up the phone again and ring Pierre Bourdieu, but he couldn't help me either.
Then I call Althusser, whose lectures I was attending.
But he couldn't help me either.
So finally I grab the red telephone and call the fire brigade.
But what happens?
The door opens, I hear them coming up the stairs.
And again I heard this eerie knocking.
The security forces stood outside, knocking on the ground with sticks, day and night.
They had very long sticks that they always knocked on the ground.
This knocking had a very threatening quality and became incorporated into the sound of approaching steps on the stairs, this tramping of feet, like the sound of military boots.
Perhaps that seems a bit cryptic, but that was my motivation for making that film.
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in the last picture (↑), notice (in the background) the aforementioned LAKE!
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