Christoph Girardet & Matthias Müller
Kristall

Germany, 2006, 35mm widescreen transferred to DVD, 14 min 30 sec
Courtesy: Timothy Taylor Gallery and the artists

‘Kristall creates a melodrama inside seemingly claustrophobic mirrored cabinets. Like an anonymous viewer, the mirror observes scenes of intimacy. It creates an image within an image, providing a frame for the characters. At the same time it makes them appear disjointed and fragmented. This instrument for self-assurance and narcissistic presentation becomes a powerful opponent that increases the sense of fragility, doubt, and loss twofold.’

Christoph Girardet & Matthias MüllerChristoph Girardet was born in Langenhagen and studied in Braunschweig. Matthias Müller was born in Bielefeld and studied there and in Braunschweig. They are both filmmakers and video artists whose collaborative works include Phoenix Tapes (1999), Manual (2002), Beacon (2002), Mirror (2003), Play (2003), Ground (2005), Catch (2005) and Kristall (2006). Kristall has been awarded the Grand Prix Canal + du court métrage at the Cannes Film Festival (2006), the Deutscher Kurzfilmpreis (2006), Distinction ‘Recommended’ (Prädikat ‘Wertvoll’) at Filmbewertungsstelle Wiesbaden and Honorable Mention at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, 2007. www.fdk-berlin.de/en/arsenal-experimental

In Kristall, Girardet & Müller have assembled individual images of men and women, of movie couples who find and lose each other again. The work is a melodrama composed of appropriated footage of mirrors from Hollywood films, reflecting the lives of star-crossed lovers. The film starts with a moment of shared happiness, when the hero clasps a necklace around his sweetheart’s neck, as if trying to hold on to the relationship. When love has long since flown and the mirror reflects an empty bed, the jewels still glitter on a stand on the vanity table.

In a work that tells of real and deceptive emotions, of the fragility of human relationships and the inevitable failure of love, each facet of the mirror motif finds its necessary place: as a metaphor for self-reflection and narcissism, as a motif representing fear, dreams, or vanitas – and finally, when the last mirror shatters, as an image of destructive violence.