Hommage to La Sarraz

In this experimental short, Lutz Dammbeck relocates his Leipzig-based artists' circle, known as the Herbstsalon (Autumn Salon), to La Sarraz Palace in Switzerland. In 1929, La Sarraz was the site of a legendary congress held by leading European avant-garde filmmakers--including Sergei Eisenstein, Bela Balazs, Ivor Montagu, Hans Richter and Walter Ruttmann--who wished to create an independent cinema as a forum for discussing issues such as elitist thinking, the tastes of the masses and the differences between art and life.

Not only avant-garde film history is at stake in HOMAGE A LA SARRAZ, however. So too are images and sounds from after 1933: Voices and visions of the Nazi past intermingle with the voices and (tele)visions of the (1981) socialist present, suggesting certain analogies. Formally, the director experiments with over-painting and non-camera animation. HOMAGE TO LA SARRAZ and Dammbeck's earlier experimental film, Metamorphoes I mark the filmic beginning of the artist's long-term project the Herakles-Konzept (Hercules Concept).