One of the more
interesting movie screened at the
festival was undoubtedly “An Impossible Project” by Jens Meurer. It was shot on
35 mm and urged everyone to put the phone down and have a digital detox.
Speaking
to the media he said it was time to start writing love letters. He made this
passionate invocation saying “People will realize one day that as humans, we
are more than just technology. We are alive, we want to be connected, and we
want to be in the real world. In this sense my film is an invitation to the
people to be real again, to start writing love letters again. It is an
invitation to read newspapers or books in its original form, not digitally.”
If you enjoyed reading this article, you can help support our journalism by adding OHeraldo as a preferred source.
He said he agreed
that there were many good things about digital life but was it important to
have everything digital. He said “My film is a little bit unusual. It’s a happy
film which offers solutions. Most importantly, it is not about taking a step
back but taking a step forward. My idea was to make people realise that there
are some physical or real things in life, like if I take some pictures using an
analogue camera, 20 years down the line, it will still be in my drawer because
we get hard copies. The pictures we take on mobile, we don’t keep them and they
just disappear when we get a new phone.”
The inspiration for
the movie came from the story of a scientist who was on a mission to save the
last Polaroid factory. He said “I came across this crazy Austrian guy in the
same year when iPhone was introduced to the world. Somehow, he had this crazy
idea that he must save this last Polaroid factory. Every other person tried to
dissuade him, saying you have gone crazy. Digital is the new world. Yet he
never relented and went on with his mission. I started following him for seven
years. My movie tells his story. And of course, due to obvious reasons, I did
not shoot it on digital but in classical movie format – entirely on a real 35
mm film print.”
Asserting that he
made the movie not because he is a retro person, Jeus said “My film is not at
all about nostalgia. It is all about how we need to think a little bit more,
how we need to slow down and to be more conscious about what we are doing. We
need to resist the idea of convenience.” Jeus reminded everyone he had produced
one of the first digital films, in the year 2002.
He
ended by reiterating that his film was not about digital is bad but analogue is
good but the importance of balance.
