After Treatment
A woman goes to a hospital for aftercare after injuring her hand. The glass doors close behind her, and she enters a microcosm which keeps time according to its own system. The changing names on monitors mark the countdown until the next patient´s appointment. It´s a waiting game until then.
A wide variety of individuals sit on permanently installed benches and hold free tabloids, self-help books or advertising brochures in front of their faces. A T-shirt´s label sticks out from the wearer´s neck. A note with a handwritten message, PUSH, has been stuck to the door of changing room F. Postcards from around the world frame the reception window. Snatches of telephone conversations, the rumble of the sterilization machines, the ding-dong when patients are called up, and the bell on a girl´s ankle comprise the ambient sound.
In 11 short minutes Edith Stauber´s After Treatment accompanies and breaks through the routine of arriving at and leaving the building. All the casual observations it makes condense into a concrete and recognizable impression. It´s like seeing one´s own memories. Stauber, an Upper Austrian filmmaker — and projectionist — has already explored her immediate surroundings through film: Über eine Straße (a co-production with Michaela Mair, 2004) was a classic documentary research expedition along an important street in Linz. In her Enter Paradise for €3.20 (2008) Stauber stopped working with live-action film, instead transposing her precise snapshots from an urban swimming pool to pastel-colored animated images in mixed technique. This technique is employed once again in After Treatment. At the same time Stauber thematically sticks with the interfaces in public space where the private individual trustingly exposes his or her (vulnerable) body.
(Isabella Reicher)
Nachbehandlung
2012
Austria
11 min