Summer

Magical snapshots captured in uncut takes: In three short films, documentary filmmaker Peter Roehsler captures the everyday summer-time life of people and places in their wondrous momentariness. Three miniatures of life presented as inquisitive observations of incidental matters.

In A Window Is A Mirror Is A Window we peer out at the street through the window of a ground floor apartment. A child looks back, but doesn´t see us. The windowpane turns into a mirror in which the child first adjusts his hair and then his cap. When he suddenly disappears downward, out of the picture, the camera´s gaze follows the child who is now squatting on the floor, waiting. Then a woman´s legs, a dog on a leash - the child is gone.

A motionless long shot shows us the nearly deserted field at a public swimming pool: in the foreground are small, colorfully painted seating arrangements, behind them, lounge chairs, trees, a restaurant. Isolated figures, so small as to be unrecognizable, move in the back of the image. A harmonious melody sounds, then a voice from the loudspeaker: “It´s that time again; the day at the pool has come to an end.” Half an hour left to change; the pool is now closed for swimming: Badeschluss. The last towels are folded; an older couple walks calmly through the picture, on their way home.

Men In Love. A beach. The ocean, a group of tourists: a vacation tableau. Two men in bathing suits, one holds a camera and takes a photo of something that remains hidden from us in this sequence shot. The positions then change and it seems as though the one man is taking a photo of the other whose pose could also be meant for others. The photo is taken; the men press their heads together to look at it. On the soundtrack: O Sole Mio (in German)—my sun. (Toby Ashraf)

Translation: Lisa Rosenblatt