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Ich, Der Kaiser Und Der Spielverderber
Henrik Lund Jørgensen. 2016 (6:48)
(Felice Hapetzeder video archive) 

 

Felice is the involuntary voice in Ich, der Kaiser und der Spielverderber. He has not chosen the words he utters, just as he has not picked the situation he is placed in. The words in the film is a voice-over based on a text I wrote and subsequently had Felice record. The text includes certain parts that are intentionally untrue or exaggerated. This was not meant as a provocation but rather as a method to apply to the footage a different angle or lightheartedness, if you like. Of the four contributions to Carousell, Felice's material was the most sensitive for me to share.

You see and hear Felice showing a family member around in Stockholm, visiting for the first time. It is an elderly, German-speaking man with a piercing voice who drives the car. Felice is in the backseat, filming the trip and their conversation in a semisecret manner. In a way, the documentation is undramatic, and the persons are very courteous to each other. But there is a subtext which does not surface. Felice has told that the family member, who lives in Vienna today, is a former Nazi, and that Felice has had to socialize with him in his childhood, and this cast a shadow well into his adult life. According to Felice, he had hoped to be able to confront the man during the film, but instead it becomes the film's unresolved issue.

 

 

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