Cellule 719

There is hardly an image to be seen. Sometimes we catch a glimpse of water in some corner, but for the most part this film is black. The lines appearing on-screen in grey are derived from Ein brief Ulrike Meinhofs aus dem Toten Trakt, a letter written by the RAF member Ulrike Meinhof in 1972, when she had just been imprisoned.

"It could be called a portrait or a composition with text and sound. Ulrike Meinhof's Letter from a prisoner in the isolation wing, written in prison in 1972/73, a document of detention in thought cascades, lends structure and weight to fifteen minutes of film. The apparently black background is dimly animated at intervals, hinting at a nocturnal outside or an area near water. This attempt to communicate the sensory deprivation resulting from isolation attempts what's actually impossible, pushing towards abstraction, harsh, brutal, dry. Any narrative "grease" is discarded. There is no space at all, hence not for a narrative, either."
(Ralph Eue - DOK Leipzig)