B wie Bartleby

By taking on Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street by Herman Melville as the inspiration for a film, B WIE BARTLEBY reflects on the impossibility of translating written language into images and sounds. Melville-themed tours at the author’s property, actors impersonating a fictional Bartleby and performers rehearsing the text make up Angela Summereder’s catalogue of ‘adaptation’ styles, with the purpose of carrying out her late partner’s wishes— Benedikt Zulauf, who acted in Straub-Huillet’s GESCHICHTSUNTERRICHT (1972), worked as a librarian and long dreamed of making a film out of the story. As we witness the couple’s discussions about the project, we become involved in Summereder’s struggles and hesitations, a rare trait in the often solemn genre of the essay film, that offers a welcome injection of emotion into an approach otherwise predominantly textual. The urgent energy of Melville’s text as well as the film’s attempts to grasp it finally dissipates over a serene evening at the Austrian Film Museum, where Zulauf worked amid books and films. It’s a fitting conclusion for a film that is at heart a celebration of cinema and literature as a means to engage with our loved ones and the world at large. (Salvador Amores)

In the presence of Angela Summereder.

Angela Summereder (selection): BLUT IN DER SPUR (1979, K), ZECHMEISTER (1981), VERMISCHTE NACHRICHTEN (2006), ABENDBROT (2008, K), JOBCENTER (2009), IM AUGENBLICK. DIE HISTORIE UND DAS OFFENE (2013, KO-REGIE, K), AUS DEM NICHTS (2015)