Despair

DESPAIR works with cinematic reenactments, which are connected in an associative collage-like layering into an experimental film, taking Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film of the same title from 1977 as its starting point.

Drawing on and digressing from various complementary sources such as Fassbinder’s contribution to „Germany in Autumn“, David Cronenberg’s „Dead Ringers“, the 1970s „Mission Impossible“ TV-series as well as cel-animation, the theme of the cinematic double is explored and questions of identity, identification and alienation are raised alongside an inquiry into the political and cultural legacies of the German Autumn.

Writer/Director: Benjamin Ramírez Pérez
Performance: Alexander Pascal Forré, Nils Herzogenrath, Clarissa Kopanitsak, Deborah Kopanitsak, Johannes Wohnseifer
DoP: Paul Faltz
Additional camera: Ian Purnell
Artistic assistance: Stefan Ramírez Pérez
Key grip & gaffer: Paul Reinholz
Camera assistant: Stephanie Englert
Sound recording: Tim Gorinski