Guest: Ted Fendt – Outside Noise
’22
OFFoff and Sphinx Cinema are proud to present the cinema of Ted Fendt for the first time in Belgium. An independent filmmaker, translator and projectionist, Fendt (1989) was born in Philadelphia and lives in Berlin. He made a name for himself at festivals such as FID Marseille, the Viennale and Berlinale Forum. We show his latest film Outside Noise and three of his shorts, all on 35mm. The director is present for a discussion.
With his customary mix of narrative restraint and intellectual curiosity, Fendt follows a small group of young women through Berlin and Vienna over the course of several months, particularly Daniela, who has just returned from traveling in New York and is dealing with a bout of insomnia. Shot on 16mm and glowing with natural light, Outside Noise – co-written by Fendt and his two lead actors, Daniela Zahlner and Mia Sellmann – is an authentic depiction of the tremors and pleasures of the in-between years of our early thirties. An insomniac’s hangout film.
The film deals with many things but above all it is about these people and places, their presences intensified by their recording on film and subsequent projection. —Ted Fendt
His short films are uncompromising yet spendthrift miniatures shot on 16mm. Broken Specs, Travel Plans and Going Out all follow the faintly absurdist travails of a group of ostensibly unremarkable denizens of Haddonfield, NJ, the mesmerizingly anonymous suburb of Philadelphia where Fendt grew up. The elegance of these episodic works is matched only by the precision with which Fendt magnifies the humour and emotional texture of a socially awkward young man whose glasses are broken at a party (Broken Specs), a UPS employee considering taking a trip (Travel Plans), and a girl going on a date to see the recent remake of Robocop (Going Out). The films’ non-professional performers are pure presence, and their opacity accentuates the air of spontaneity and mystery. These cipher-like figures float from one encounter to another, telling and retelling stories.
Fendt draws from his own unique host of influences – Straub-Huillet, Luc Moullet, Eric Rohmer, Henry King, sundry others – to arrive at a way of working and a constellation of themes and tones that has become his and his alone. (Dan Sullivan, Cinema Scope)
Outside Noise was voted 2nd in Film Comment’s list with ‘Best Undistributed Films of 2021’
This program will be shown entirely on 35mm and followed by a Q&A with Ted Fendt.
