Bewegungen eines nahen Bergs / Movements of a Nearby Mountain (AT, FR 2019)
In a remote, abandoned industrial site near a centuries-old ore mine in the Austrian Alps, a self-taught mechanic runs a business exporting used cars to his native Nigeria. As he pursues his lonely day-to-day activities with wondrous serenity, past, present and future begin to overlap, and memories of a lost friendship resurface against the backdrop of a mysterious promise of everlasting resources.
Beyond obsessions with technical innovation, the cartel-like collusion of auto parts shops, and unethical affiliations between the world of marketing and pollution levels, at the base of the Erzberg mine in Styria (central-western Austria), Sebastian Brameshuber discovers a part of the automobile market that is seemingly not so alienated. A Nigerian immigrant in Austria, Cliff buys old cars in order to salvage them in a dilapidated warehouse on the side of a federal highway in the woods.
Beyond obsessions with technical innovation, the cartel-like collusion of auto parts shops, and unethical affiliations between the world of marketing and pollution levels, at the base of the Erzberg mine in Styria (central-western Austria), Sebastian Brameshuber discovers a part of the automobile market that is seemingly not so alienated. A Nigerian immigrant in Austria, Cliff buys old cars in order to salvage them in a dilapidated warehouse on the side of a federal highway in the woods. Yet “salvage” hardly seems to describe what Movements of a Nearby Mountain shows us of this work. One would come closer to what Cliff carries out in summer and winter in nearly complete isolation if one were to name each
Beyond obsessions with technical innovation, the cartel-like collusion of auto parts shops, and unethical affiliations between the world of marketing and pollution levels, at the base of the Erzberg mine in Styria (central-western Austria), Sebastian Brameshuber discovers a part of the automobile market that is seemingly not so alienated. A Nigerian immigrant in Austria, Cliff buys old cars in order to salvage them in a dilapidated warehouse on the side of a federal highway in the woods.
Beyond obsessions with technical innovation, the cartel-like collusion of auto parts shops, and unethical affiliations between the world of marketing and pollution levels, at the base of the Erzberg mine in Styria (central-western Austria), Sebastian Brameshuber discovers a part of the automobile market that is seemingly not so alienated. A Nigerian immigrant in Austria, Cliff buys old cars in order to salvage them in a dilapidated warehouse on the side of a federal highway in the woods. Yet “salvage” hardly seems to describe what Movements of a Nearby Mountain shows us of this work. One would come closer to what Cliff carries out in summer and winter in nearly complete isolation if one were to name each!
[Der Film] „porträtiert einen nigerianischen Automechaniker in der Steiermark mit poetischer Gelassenheit. Und übt subtil Kritik an Wirtschaftskettenhaft.
„Ein Film am Scheideweg, voller Fremdartigkeit und Relevanz. Paradiesische Reinheit des Berges, Überreste der produktivistischen Zivilisation, Metapher der Wiederverwertung, Ganzheit eines Film-Tableaus.“ Jacques
„Die Kamera (von Klemens Hufnagl) wird nicht müde, Cliff bei seiner körperlichen Arbeit zu beobachten und sein Gespür fürs Geschäftliche einzufangen. Die Schönheit der Bilder liegt in der Hochachtung, die sie ihrem Protagonisten zollen. Dass Sebastian Brameshuber die dokumentarische Erzählung mit geträumten Sequenzen einer vergangenen Bruderschaft und mit zukünftigen Visionen einer Rückkehr nach Nigeria so poetisch zu verbinden weiß – davor zieht nicht nur der Wassermann im Erzberg voll Anerkennung seinen Eisenhut.“
„Brameshuber ist etwas wundervoll Einfaches gelungen. Du musst nichts anderes tun, als das, was auf der Leinwand passiert, anzuschauen, zu sehen und zu hören, um einem anderen menschlichen Wesen näher zu zu kommen – wo alles sichtbar wird und doch geheimnisvoll bleibt.“
The Objects and Myths of the Market On Movements of a Nearby Mountain (2019)
Beyond obsessions with technical innovation, the cartel-like collusion of auto parts shops, and unethical affiliations between the world of marketing and pollution levels, at the base of the Erzberg mine in Styria (central-western Austria), Sebastian Brameshuber discovers a part of the automobile market that is seemingly not so alienated. A Nigerian immigrant in Austria, Cliff buys old cars in order to salvage them in a dilapidated warehouse on the side of a federal highway in the woods. Yet “salvage” hardly seems to describe what Movements of a Nearby Mountain shows us of this work. One would come closer to what Cliff carries out in summer and winter in nearly complete isolation if one were to name each of the procedures one bye legends of never-ending raw materials, and the chain of exploitation derived from them, the suspension of time and space. At the end, the sound of Nigeria’s heat in December is laid over a long, hypnotic phantom ride through a wintry Erzberg landscape, a foggy mountain in the distance. Cliff, the iron, the market—they are always and everywhere together, strangely present, even if they can also hardly be conclusively placed.