Delphi-Filmpalast      So.14.02.1999 14.00 
Kino 7 im Zoo-Palast   So.14.02.1999 21.00
Arsenal                Mo.15.02.1999 20.00 
Akademie der Künste    Di.16.02.1999 12.00 

The documentary To The Sea follows the river Danube from its origins in Germany to its estuary in Romania. The film is photographed in black and white, which both moves landscape and people into a discrete distance and, through the paradox of fleeting observation, brings them closer. Annik Leroy structures images and observations to look like a balance sheet of the 20th century. So many political movements have shaped and disfigured the face of Europe this century. Using a long shot, Annik Leroy remembers the holocaust in the concentration camp Mauthausen. The steps of the ‘stairs of death’ are covered with snow. The image of an empty and cold landscape in winter – an image of the extinction of Jewish life – is accompanied by a tape-recorded voice off-screen informing visitors about the layout of huts in the camp. To The Sea is a documentary which evokes contradictory emotions and sensations. The borders of the countries which the Danube crosses on her way to the estuary are like thresholds from one form of life to another. At the border between Austria and Hungary the film talks about the fear socialist ideology provoked in people, which crept into their minds and bodies. It seems that the end of communism released this fear which gripped people for so many years, transforming it into a dull and heavy dream from which they were only now awaking. Not the dream, however, but being awake is experienced as confusing and unreal. Leroy’s film, calmly paced though it is, doesn’t turn away from the shocking poverty which has struck so many people after the collapse of socialism in Hungary and Romania.Klaus Dermutz