Alexej Tchernyi [Videonale.11]

Fish Soup spirits the viewer away to an Italian seaside village, inviting him to witness what the inhabitants are up to in a variety of settings: banal everyday situations are joined by bizarre constellations that gradually reveal a common theme: people´s careless encroachment on the environment. The story culminates in a series of violent explosions beneath the surface of the sea: the contaminated water boils, steam rises, dead fish float up onto the surface. And yet the far-reaching implications of what they are doing - the destruction of the environment - does not seem to worry the residents in the least. Instead, they seize on the catastrophe as an occasion for wild celebrations and begin to spoon up the fish soup they have prepared. The people´s guileless behaviour is conveyed by means of colourful, naive-looking imagery. Various animation techniques both embellish the events and pass over them. Braun and Tchernyi not only deliver here socially critical food for thought, they also encourage the viewer to reflect on his own treatment of the environment.

Julia Kürten