I saw you were dancing

Today, when social media keeps the virtual space in the private sphere wide open 24/7, the clandestine view into real living spaces takes on a new appeal. Behind window panes and floral curtains, the life that is not meant for public viewing takes place: an old woman spits into a shot glass, a girl plays the piano, a woman folds laundry. Normality as an event.

In her short feature film, Sarah Pech, born in Tyrol in 1992, partly raised there, and now living in Hamburg, sends a teenager – Margarita – through her home village on a summer night. She roams, jumps around, and peeks through closed windows, ready to duck down at any moment. From a wall ledge she observes a garden party, a dance choreography, a boy saying something in French – possibly a reference to the French nouvelle vague, whose voyeuristic pleasure at watching the rippling along of life contrasted with traditional cinema's compulsive production of storyline. The art, in Ich hab dich tanzen sehn lies in the choice of gaze, in the silent dialogue between observer and observed, in the sound design.

Reduced to “G’night” or “The raised bed turned out beautifully”, the spoken word leads a niche existence in Ich hab dich tanzen sehn. It contributes to the anti-narrative. The cinematic space is dominated by sounds: the rustling of leaves, the rumbling of a thunderstorm, the cackling of geese, and jungle birds from another part of the world screeching into the Tyrolean mountain village night. At one point, behind the barn, when Margarita is chopping wood in the glow of the light shining through the barred window openings, a nighttime visitor approaches her. What happens next is obvious – even in light of what has occurred so far. In Tyrol, where the number of axes exceeds that of electric guitars, the two play air woodchoppers: they carry out the movements on the chopping block without an axe – the sound of a metal blade splitting wood suffices. In this film it is enough to show the way reality plays. (Anna Katharina Laggner)

Translation: John Wojtowicz