Mr W. is a man who loves to laugh. Together with his friends Mr K. and Mr W., he is also a member of the Schlumpers, a self-organized atelier community of artists with different disabilities. Instead of interpreting art as an escape fantasy from normative society like most neurotypical artists, these artists see art as a vehicle to build a community. What seems like a utopian society where artists cooperate instead of compete, works subversively serene in practice. Their work as self-taught artists, videographers, field recordists and art teachers at an elementary school, their community, artistic obsessions and private mythologies are the subject of this collaborative documentary film portrait that was was co-written, co-directed and co-filmed with its three protagonists and their own video cameras.
Link to official website
Feature Documentary film
76min, 2K DCP
Supported by the Film Fund of Hamburg- Schleswig-Holstein, the friends of the Heinrich Böll foundation, the Heineman Bros., the Liebelt Foundation and German Films
Distributed by the Royal Anthropological Institute, UK
ⓒ Papenbroock Film, 2017
Director of Photography Thomas Oswald, Michael Gerdsmann, Bernhard Krebs, Horst Wässle; Sound Julian Rambow & Miguel Murrieta; Editing Lena Hatebur; Sound design Simone Weber: Sound mix Stephan Konken: Production Jana Papenbroock & Frank Papenbroock; Music Geert Chatrou, Julia Holter, Jason Grier & Michael Gerdsmann
Festivals: This Human World International Documentary Film Festival, Vienna, December 2016; Ethnocineca International Documentary Film Festival Vienna, May 2017; Filmkunstfest Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Schwerin, June 2017; Near Nazareth International Film Festival Nazareth, June 2017; Int. Film Festival Emden-Norderney, Emden, June 2017; Fünf Seen International Film Festival, Lake Starnberg, July 2017; Open Eyes International Film Festival Marburg, July 2017; Golden Apricot Int. Film Festival Yerevan, July 2017; Nafa Film Festival Aarhus, August 2017; Kunstgriff Filmfest Heide, September 2017; Document International Human Rights Film Festival Glasgow, October 2017; One with a Movie Camera International Ethnographic Film Festival Marburg, October 2017; Dokumentarfilmsalon Hamburg, Januar 2018; Trento Film Festival, May 2018; The British Museum, London June 2018, Docademia Documentary Film Festival, Chicago, August 2018; Flexibles Flimmern, Hamburg November 2018; Athens Ethnographic Film Festival, November 2018
Awards: First prize ‘Best Documentary’ at Open Eyes International Film Festival Marburg, July 2017; 2nd Prize ‘Best Film’ Audience Award & Jury Award ‘Best Film’ at Kunstgriff Filmfest Heide, September 2017; Nomination for Excellence in Visual Anthropology (EVA Award) at Ethnocineca, Vienna, May 2017