- How are you?
- I just locked myself out and I’m trying to reach Kathrine to see if I can get the key. She’s the only one with the spare. It 's really stupid.
This is the beginning of Unhappy Hour (2023) the last short film by Ted Fendt (New Jersey, 1989) that depicts the encounter of Claudia and Franza and the story of a key. Claudia and Franza could be in Berlin. They talk in German to each other. They also could be friends of Daniela, Mia and Natascha who are the protagonists of Outside Noise (2021). In this case, the director shows different encounters between NYC, Berlin and Vienna and it has to do with the feeling of not wanting to be in a place anymore but not knowing how to express it. Regarding Outside Noise, Fendt relates it to his own experience living the last years in NYC before moving to Berlin in 2018. These two films compose the third and last session focused on the work of the filmmaker Ted Fends and we could say that they remind, in a way, to Éric Rohmer.
The first session of the film series, however, it’s composed of three short films and the first feature film by Fendt, Short Stay (2016). They all happen between New Jersey and Philadelphia. The protagonists are Mike, Rob and Liz and represent different encounters and situations of some twentysomethings that don’t seem to have any clear direction in their lives. The humor of the films reminds of Luc Moullet. One of the virtues of Fendt’s cinema is that he makes fiction movies but where we see the daily life of some characters with such a naturality that it seems documentary. Could be, partly, because he works with no- professional actors.
Another characteristic of the filmmaker is that in addition to direct films, he has other jobs related to cinema. He is a projectionist, traducer and, for example, in 2016, he edited an anthology about Straub & Huillet for the Austrian Filmmuseum. Could be because of this, all his films are analogic and we will have the opportunity to watch them in their original format in Tabakalera. We could relate the first session with Luc Moullet and the third one to Éric Rohmer. Regarding the second session, we could think about Straub & Huillet. Classical period presents us Cal, a book and classical culture lover that has different meetings around Philadelphia with other people that share his passion. The center of the film is a lengthy discussion of the fifth canto of Dante’s Purgatory in the Divine Comedy.