A film made in 1976 that chronicles a summer spent in Vienna four years previously. Super8 footage, sketches and scenes in vivid black and white. Fashion photographer John (John Cook), whose girlfriend has just left him, wants to finish the film he started making with her with friends from Vienna’s Bohemian scene. But life, jobs and music drift in between the work on this project. It's a slow summer in the city – filled with daytrips to the countryside, affairs, relationships, friendships, small and big issues the importance of which constantly shifts.
The casual unobtrusiveness of Cook's first full-length, partially autobiographic film gives it a tone that puts its perspective somewhere between fiction and documentary and is reminiscent of the films of Jean Eustache. Completely unperturbed, Cook documents the presence of passing situations, the lazy summer in the city, the aimless comings and goings of his friends. With its simple, "personal" style, Slow Summer embodies an attitude towards narrative cinema the melancholy of which never robs the past of the randomness and wondrousness of its former appearance.
Michael Baute
Production: Michael Pilz, Wien; Interspot Film, Wien
Screenplay: John Cook, Michael Pilz
Camera: John Cook, Helmut Boselmann, Michael Pilz
Cast: John Cook, Helmut Boselmann, Eva Grimm, Hilde Pilz, Michael Pilz, Günter Duda
Format: 35mm (filmed on Super8), Black&White
Running Time: 83 min.
Language: German
Photo: © Michael Pilz/ Österreichisches Filmmuseum
