Antje Engelmann
Point of No Return
Video
In Point of No Return Engelmann samples documentary footage from her private archive and the Internet to form a multi-layered filmic essay. In addition to her own voice, audio recordings can be heard from the Golden Record, which NASA sent into space as a message for extraterrestrial life. During her travels from New York to Los Angeles, Engelmann encountered the natural forces of the prairie, birds, and man: here is the genetic engineer whose mission it is to genetically encode and bring back to life the passenger pigeon; the ex-bodybuilder from Muscle Beach in Venice with his parrot who talks about the expanse of the cosmos; the Beat poet who tells about the Indians, psychoactive cacti, and shamanistic rituals. And here she is herself as expectant mother. Engelmann repeatedly hits upon iconic images of various forms of knowledge. Countercultural utopias, the first photographic view of the “whole” world – The Blue Marble –, Martha, the last passenger pigeon, the Kuksu dance, and the earth’s physical stresses are contained in the film. Point of No Return is a work about extinction and reanimation, death and birth. The complex montage is an oscillating search from microcosm to macrocosm and back again.
Antje Engelmann
Point of No Return
Video
In Point of No Return Engelmann samples documentary footage from her private archive and the Internet to form a multi-layered filmic essay. In addition to her own voice, audio recordings can be heard from the Golden Record, which NASA sent into space as a message for extraterrestrial life. During her travels from New York to Los Angeles, Engelmann encountered the natural forces of the prairie, birds, and man: here is the genetic engineer whose mission it is to genetically encode and bring back to life the passenger pigeon; the ex-bodybuilder from Muscle Beach in Venice with his parrot who talks about the expanse of the cosmos; the Beat poet who tells about the Indians, psychoactive cacti, and shamanistic rituals. And here she is herself as expectant mother. Engelmann repeatedly hits upon iconic images of various forms of knowledge. Countercultural utopias, the first photographic view of the “whole” world – The Blue Marble –, Martha, the last passenger pigeon, the Kuksu dance, and the earth’s physical stresses are contained in the film. Point of No Return is a work about extinction and reanimation, death and birth. The complex montage is an oscillating search from microcosm to macrocosm and back again.