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by Friederike Pezold
grade: 8.5
Lights, colours, extravagant costumes and highly paradoxical situations become the trademark of this precious and original Canale Grande. Friederike Pezold is not afraid to dare, to have her say, to ‘shout’ her anger – always with a welcome touch of irony and humour – against today’s society, against a latent chauvinism and against what the world of telecommunications has become. At the Diagonale 2021.
In a parallel universe…
“In the movie theater, we look up. When you watch television, you look down”, said the great Jean-Luc Godard. And this particular sentence also seems to be the motto of filmmaker Friederike Pezold. Her film Canale Grande – a true ‘hidden’ masterpiece of Austrian cinema, made in 1983 and presented to the audience on the occasion of the Diagonale 2021, section Innovatives Kino – attacks, in fact, precisely television and its contents, offering the viewer an alternative vision and a strongly subversive means of communication.
A television broadcasts nonsense images with banal folk music in the background. Then, slowly a brush paints the screen black, erasing everything. It is the beginning of a new form of communication. A wonderfully free, anarchic form of communication, where one can finally break free from all conventions of the past. The protagonist (played by the director herself) wants to create a new means of communication. To do so, she needs many cameras and monitors, but no one is apparently willing to lend her the necessary equipment. Then, finally, the woman succeeds in her intentions. Thus, Radio Freies Utopia is born and her house is transformed into a real television studio. A television studio in which totally unconventional films with a strong feminist character are made.
Lights, colours, extravagant costumes and highly paradoxical situations become the trademark of this precious and original Canale Grande. Friederike Pezold is not afraid to dare, to have her say, to ‘shout’ her anger – always with a welcome touch of irony and humour – against today’s society, against a latent male chauvinism and against what the world of telecommunications has become (or, better still, what it was in the 1980s).
How would the world itself become if one could finally change it to one’s will? Perhaps it would even be a man who would give birth to the new Messiah, and the latter would even be a little girl, greeted by three female Magi. But Canale Grande is not just that. Canale Grande is much more and in little less than an hour and a half it gives the viewer the most contrasting emotions, making him have fun, but also reflect.
Interestingly, although Friederike Pezold made this film of hers in 1983, it is still younger and more relevant than ever. And perhaps Friederike Pezold herself could never have imagined what the world she so strongly criticised would become today. Fortunately, such masterpieces also exist on film. And watching them after many years is always a precious experience. An exciting, colourful and pleasantly crazy journey into an ideal world. A world that needs lots and lots of courage to exist and be created.
Original title: Canale Grande
Directed by: Friederike Pezold
Country/year: Austria / 1983
Running time: 88’
Genre: experimental
Cast: Friederike Pezold, Elfi Mikesch, Hildegard Westbeld, Ebba Jahn
Screenplay: Friederike Pezold
Cinematography: Elfi Mikesch, Wolfgang Pilgrim, Fritz Ölberg
Produced by: Friederike Pezold