Exakte Vision. Helen Hessels »Jules & Jim«
Ulrike Haage
Exakte Vision is a prequel, an audio drama, a film without pictures, says Ulrike Haage. A story about Helen Hessel, it is set near Lake Starnberger in South Germany in the 1920s. This was an area that proved attractive to many scientists and artists, including writers Pierre Roché and Franz Hessel whose wife Helen then had an affair with Pierre. The story acted as the central plot to several novels and, not least, François Truffaut’s film Jules et Jim (1962) through which it became world famous. The diary extracts as such remained unpublished until 1991 when André Dimanche,
assisted by his son Ulrich and the late Stéphane Hessel, published them. This exceptional audio drama, which embeds parts of Helen’s diary as play and sound elements in a filmic scenario, is to be presented as a MO Loudspeaker »insert« at the Dortmund Arts Centre.
With the support of Bavarian Radio, the Museum am Ostwall, Ulrike Haage and the Sans Soleil Publishing Company
Voices Andreas Grothgar (Franz) and Tonio Arrango (Pierre) | Voices and singing Meret Becker (Helen), Katharina Franck (Bobann), Judith Engel (Fanny) and Mathias Maschke (Cook) | Keyboards, typewriter and electronics Ulrike Haage | on the sound sculptures Meret Becker
Ulrike Haage
Ulrike Haage is a composer, (jazz) pianist, sound artist, radio play writer and one of the most versatile performers in Germany. She was the pianist in the all-female big band known as Reichlich weiblich (approx: »Amply Womanly«), formed with Katharina Franck the basis of the Rainbirds pop group, has been active at theatres in Zurich, Düsseldorf and Berlin and she has worked with musicians such as Alfred Harth, FM Einheit and Phil Minton. She has also supervised productions for the radio and her audiobook publishing company Sans Soleil. In 2003, she was the first woman to be awarded the German Jazz Prize (Albert-Mangelsdorff- Preis). In 2010, at the Lübeck Nordic Film Days, Ulrike Haage was awarded the Special Music Prize for her soundtrack to the documentary film Zwiebelfische – Jimmy Ernst, Glückstadt New York (directed by Christian Bau and Arthur Dieckhoff).
