Akademie der Künste    Fr.19.02.1999 14.30

During the month of December 1997 filmmaker Jan Peters shot a three minute reel of film every day. Edited in chronological order, these thirty one reels form the film DECEMBER, 1-31. The commentary – which is sometimes recorded separately and sometimes spoken directly to the camera – is cut off abruptly at the end of each reel, almost like a torn film, thirty-one times. DECEMBER, 1-31 is a filmic diary with a radical subjective approach which allows a free association of images. Jan Peters’ avalanche of speech and images combines biographical anecdotes, banal observations and philosophical reflections. Peters’ theory is, that, as long as he calls a spade a spade, the relationship of any of these images to his life will eventually become self-evident. He is obliged to try and make these connections, moreover, in spite of the dramatic rupture caused by the death of his best friend. Making DECEMBER, 1-31 was an ironic, manic, consistent but also humorous way of working through his grief; an exercise which began with his pain at the impossibility of the synchronicity of death and life and continued with the attempt – via the film – to maintain contact with his dead friend. The search for signs, signals and messages in his every day environment takes the filmmaker to the rooftops of Paris, to a radio telescope in Nançay, into the internet, to a seance and finally, to the French alps.