The Slow Business of Going
Athina Rachel Tsangari
»I did not ›decide‹ to make this movie. It sort of happened on its own, sometimes despite myself and itself! Throughout the five years of its making, it ended up being more like a quilt, a patchwork of autobiographies, geographies and genres.« Athina Rachel Tsangari
Petra Going is a professional world and time-traveller. Instead of luggage, she travels with a rocking chair, taking it from one hotel room to the next. »I’m kind of homesick but I don’t know for what or where,« she observes wryly. The urban environments appear as interchangeable non-places: Tokyo, Manhattan, Tangier, Tel Aviv… an endless succession of cities that merely claim to exist but are not really identifiable. Each city is an episode in the film, and each episode is an encounter with a person, filmed with its own aesthetic in an anarchic, collaborative mix of materials and genres. Created around the year 2000, the film captures the turn of the millennium as an all-encompassing, detached homelessness beyond the reach of everyday realities. No sooner has Petra arrived than she is already planning her next departure. She is travelling on behalf of the Experience Data Agency, collecting other people’s experiences and storing them in her memory, from where they can be downloaded into an archive.
Shot on Super 8, 16 mm, Mini DV and 35 mm cameras, enlarged, manipulated and processed with effects, Athina Tsangari’s debut film is a dazzling cinematic firecracker.
Guest: Athina Rachel Tsangari
In cooperation with Academy of Media Arts Cologne
Athina Rachel Tsangari
Filmmaker and producer ##Athina Rachel Tsangari## is considered a central figure in the new Greek cinema. She studied comparative literature, philosophy and theatre at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki before completing a master’s degree in performance studies at New York University and studying film at the University of Texas. Her path to cinema came through a role in Richard Linklater’s legendary film Slackers. The Slow Business of Going was her graduation film. She went on to produce films like Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth – with Lanthimos later producing for her acclaimed feature Attenberg, winner of the IFFF Dortmund+Köln Feature Film Award in 2010.
Films by Athina Rachel Tsangari
Chevalier 2015 | Borgia 2014 | 24 Frames per Century 2013 | The Capsule 2012 | Attenberg 2010 | The Slow Business of Going 2001
