Elfi Mikesch’s sensitive and original debut feature follows the daily routine of a 16-year-old girl, her brother, and their mother in a West Berlin housing block in the 1970s. Blending documentary and staged scenes – dreamed up together with the protagonists – the film celebrates small escapes from life’s monotony. It is paired with a short film about a woman recently separated from her husband, who fantasises about herself in different roles.

With an introduction by Selina Robertson

Tickets will become available after Easter.

The Hyena’s Breakfast
West Germany 1982, 20 mins, b/w, digital (16mm), with English subtitles.
Written, directed and filmed by Elfi Mikesch

I Often Think of Hawaii
West Germany 1977/78, 82 mins, colour & b/w, digital (16mm), with English subtitles.
Written, directed and filmed by Elfi Mikesch


About the Films

The Hyena’s Breakfast

Based on motifs from Maria Isabel Barrenos, Maria Teresa Hortas and Maria Velho da Costa’s New Portuguese Letters (aka Three Marias).

A young woman in New York. “You simply have to admit that what you’ve done is reckless.” This kind of concerned voice-over constantly follows “Maria” as she enters an apartment. It is the imploring voice of the man she has just left, and it comes from the loosely dangling telephone receiver. “The Hyena’s Breakfast” plays with the violent fantasies of a young woman who frees herself from her past through self-dramatisation. “Confusing is the double face of the hyena, restlessly making its way to the graves of death. The hyena as an obscene symbol of modern society, identified with the aura of the carcass on which it feeds. Repressed, stigmatised and despised with the same gesture by which death and dying are excommunicated from the society with which we are dealing.” (source: Elfi Mikesch)

West Germany 1982, 20 mins, b/w, digital (16mm), with English subtitles.
Written, directed and filmed by Elfi Mikesch; production manager: Heide Breitel; sound: Anke-Rixa Hansen; set design and costumes: Elfi Mikesch; editor: Elfi Mikesch; production company: Oh Muvie-Film. With Sheila McLaughlin, Gary Schneider, Thelma Abascal; telephone voice: Heinz Emigholz.             

I Often Think of Hawaii
 
I Often Think of Hawaii was meant to be “A film for every living room”, in which fantasies and the minutiae of everyday life take on a special significance. The film tells the story of sixteen-year-old Carmen, who lives with her mother, Ruth Rossol, and her brother, Tito, in a block of flats on the outskirts of West Berlin. It is the 1970s. Her mother worked for years on the assembly line in a button factory and now earns a living for the family as a cleaner.  The children’s father, a Puerto Rican career soldier, left them after Carmen was born. Apart from a few postcards and some Hawaiian music records, he left nothing behind. Carmen wants to be a dancer. She dreams of a warm, sunny country. Tito is a quiet boy who loves playing the violin. (source: Elfi Mikesch)

West Germany 1977/78, 82 mins, colour & b/w, digital (16mm), with English subtitles.
Written, directed and filmed by Elfi Mikesch, producer: Laurens Straub on behalf of ZDF/Kleines Fernsehspiel, Series editor: Maya Constantine, Editor: Elfi Tillack, supported by the Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film, distributor: Filmwelt, Premiere: Feb 1979, Berlin International Film Festival, International Forum of Young Film 1978. Starring Carmen, Ruth and Dieter Rossol.