The Back Room
The Back Room is a small, and because of this more impressive, masterpiece of cinematic handwork. It surprises us with a richness of kinetically organised movement which neatly prevents superficial or anticipatory reading and thus invites repeated viewing. Together with short references to sentimental hits, the film brings together feelings such as yearning, love, parting and hurt. Inventive in its use of cinematographic style, sensitive, but at the same time full of self irony, the film explores the small space between inside and outside, personal reality and that of the other, and, with an astonishing feeling for form, leaves one with the unconsciously consumed dreams and illusions. In the end these impressions are separable - as long as one remains open and curious. (Michael Pilz) The Back Room by Regina Höllbacher is a black and white film with a vocabulary of quiet pictures of rooms, fragmentary views of the world and failed attempts to exchange glances with someone sitting opposite. The film knits these scenes together into a tapestry which, with a certain resignation, emphasises the theme of the loss of utopia. A very personal film, a farewell full of longing. (Klaus Telscher)
Das Hinterzimmer
1995
Austria
10 min