entmust 2014

The muse has left the building

105 Mins | DE | English subtitles

Documentary about Underground Film maker Carl Andersen

The film introduces Carl Andersen, Austrian underground film maker (1958-2012), who spent most of his life outside Vienna, where he grew up and made his most notorious underground sex, drugs and rock n roll movies in black and white 16mm: ‘I was a Teenage Zabbadoing’ 1989, and ‘Mondo Weirdo’ 1990.

After such a wild and rebellious start, and after moving to Berlin, Andersen proceeded to film on his favourite subject: sex and relationships, yet generally less ‘trash-based’ and much more philosophical and searching in nature. Always using a cast of mostly non-professional actors and friends, his films are sometimes painfully autobiographical.

‘Entmust’ mirrors this personal process of Andersen’s in complex layers and asks finally-what is real and what is fantasy? (What is imagined and what is fact?)

The director (Holles) is constantly, albeit jokingly, instructed as to how a documentary should properly be made by the director (Andersen)- this being one of the film’s central tensions, thus depicting how difficult it is to make a film about a director.

Andersen, himself a charismatic raconteur, speaks with ironic humour about the experience of making film and of trying to get his work shown, problems with actors, with the shooting of sex scenes, and so on. The film uses clips from Andersen’s films, interwoven with the narrative, including Andersen’s self reflective home footage in the months before his somewhat self inflicted demise.