Spitting

The young man spitting cherry pits, with an off-screen accomplice, attempts to hit the camera´s lens with one of them. Various moods become apparent on the way to a certain goal: effort, failure, then finally success. A happy, lighthearted film.

(Friedl vom Gröller)


I didn’t know this young man. In Paris I was looking for an Arab because are rumoured to be particular good at spitting, but do not like to be portrayed as such. In the end I picked out the most handsome man in the supermarket – there were a lot of Arabs – and thank god he did it. My idea was actually to make the viewer believe that the cherry stone flies into his or her eye. But my camera is far too slow – so this did not really work. Furthermore I had glued a filter to protect my objective and that was another reason why the effect could not be realized.

(from an interview with Friedl vom Gröller)