Lacrimosa

Lacrimosa © Josef Dabernig courtesy sixpackfilm

Funeral ceremonies in the attic rooms of a spooky villa. The old aunt gathers her great-grandnieces around a child’s coffin to pray. Folded hands, furtive glances, rosaries a close stool are the ingredients of an eccentric children’s pageant in which the illustrious group stumbles from intimidation, rebellion, and a perilous staircase to pondering the sense of being. (production note)

In Josef Dabernig’s films, places, interiors, nooks and crannies, as well as the spaces of memory they contain, are the main protagonists – animated matter. For Lacrimosa, this principle applies doubly. The setting of the action, which could be the reenactment of a distant childhood experience, is the attic of a villa. Initially broken down into image fragments, it points to an absence: an empty bed, empty coat hangers, relics of a world of objects that has fallen out of time. Only then do the human actors appear: hands, young and old, folded in prayer or occupied with the...