Peter Nestler’s first film, made in collaboration with Kurt Ulrich, is a portrait of a small and quiet seaside village in East Frisia in Germany, seen from the perspective of an old dike sluice. The text, written and narrated by poet and artist Robert Wolfgang Schnell, speaks with candour about the history and life of the village and the toil of the fishermen, subtly evoking the transformation brought by war and the inevitable change caused by the disappearance of traditional livelihoods. “This is something fundamental: the concrete is so foreign to us; the viewer is no longer the subject of the images, no one is. We can only take possession through fantasy, which is external to things. The commentary — with its impossible self — is still trying, but the dike sluice in the image is only one thing among others.” (Hartmut Bitomsky)
