'
Heinrich und Mary-Jane' by
Stefan Zlamal is a video which is comprised of 'found' audio footage and 're-enacted' dialogues between a man and a woman. The two characters, who apparently used to have a relationship, meet in the woman’s apartment and talk about their current, as well as their past and possible future relationship(s). In doing so, it becomes clear for the viewer that their words and sentences have been taken from other contexts and sources of origin. The woman’s voice comes from the female character 'Marianne' played by Liv Ullmann in Ingmar Bergmann’s 'Scenes from a Marriage' (1973), while the voice of the male character is taken from a reading by Sven Regener, Berlin-based author and band leader of Element of Crime. In 'Heinrich und Mary-Jane' these voices are 'embodied' in one single shot by the male and the female character.
The camera unerringly rests on faces and drifts away onto other elements, sometimes leaving things aside or assigning them excessive meaning. The video is less about giving Bergmann’s film a contemporary meaning (which it possibly has never lost in the last thirty years) than it is about showing how the things we talk about and think of as highly individual and intimate consist of generic words and phrases that have been, are being and will be pronounced elsewhere. At times this is funny, at other times, just the opposite. (transmediale.07 jury statement)
