“The cultural industry produces stars: camera, light, and editing charge the image of a hairy chest, the blink of an eye, with an artificial sexual energy, and then the viewers pay a lot of money to get closer to a fictional character who never existed.
Želimir Žilnik’s materialist cinematic art is the antithesis of this. His cheerful approach to his protagonists, his relaxed and composed curiosity about real people allows their lust for life, their corporeality to grow into his films – as a headstrong stubbornness that quite naturally and sometimes unconsciously confronts unjust circumstances.
Never does he let the disenfranchised become bodies of evidence for his worldview. They always remain the authors of their own desires, their life plans, the lust of their imperfected muscles, butts, feet, wishes, plans, teeth. This infuses his films with a smack of sensuality and anarchistic wit. It lures the appetite of the audience not to the big screen stars but to real, imperfect humans in their – our – own lives.
We exit Žilnik’s cinema, kiss the next best, and start a revolution together.”
Tina Leisch is a film, text, and theatre maker and a political activist.
My View is a series of tours in which experts, amateurs, and interesting people are invited to present their personal view of the exhibition.
