Master of Sofa Surfers' visual identity, author inclined to a 'different' film, Timo Novotny, swept us off our feet with his long debut, fantastic 'Life in Loops'.

Timo Novotny is best known to those acquainted with and the fans of the mainly musical and a bit less visual project - Austrian Sofa Surfers! The band known for its appetite for experiments and always new sound puzzles pays earned and geographically conditioned attention to visual presentation/communication. This line, through Markus Kienzl, Wolfgang Frisch, Wolfgang Schloegl and Michael Holzgruber, comprising Surfers, leads us to the artistic collective, visually bended VIDOK .

..................Patience, please!............

Members of VIDOK, inclined to its majesty - the experiment - Dariusz Krzeczek, now Kowalski, Annja Krautgasser /n:ja/, Norbert Pfaffenbichler i Timo Novotny since Surfers´ very beginnings have been engaged with their "stylizing", they are familiar with designing covers, music videos, and new visuals for every tour. Each of the mentioned members of Sofa Surfers or Vidok, apart from the group, pursues his or her own solo creation. Cross-co-operations among visual and music masters are frequent, so that occasionally we enjoy a master "hit" such as the one which hit me at DIAGONALE, recently finished Austrian Film Festival where in the midst of extraordinary good experimental program I stumbled across the latest escapade which should be blamed on the mentioned Timo Novotny as the director and Surfers / Wolfgang Frisch, Markus Kienzl / at the sound mix.

Sve već piše...

'Life in Loops' / see trailer / is the title of a documentary which almost equally presents important features of their work, known under the name 'displacement activity' / also Timo´s graduation thesis / which literally means 'to move something from its correct or usual position'. In this particular case this means that the group of authors used the film of well-known Austrian director Michael Glawogger, 'megacities', and remixed it at audio and visual level. The result is a small 80 minute master piece comprising about 30% of film material used in Glawogger´s film too, about 30% of unutilized material of the same film and the rest was filmed especially for this occasion. As luck would have it, the man behind the camera was again fantastic Wolfgang Thaler, who shot 'megacities' and "Workingman´s  Death" about which we have recently written, when we were amazed, largely due to the master´s camera, at Human Rights FF.

'…'it is incredible, this story with Wolfgang, who more than anything wanted to come to Japan with us, regardless of the fact that we couldn´t pay him, since we didn´t have the budget for the cameraman of his rank. We paid for his trip, and I sold some of my equipment to buy 16mm tapes, Thaler got the camera himself.' said Novotny.

Life in Loops, Timo Novotny, borba pijevaca

Stories of people from world metropolises Bombay, Mexico, Moscow and New York, taken from 'megacities' as well as new Tokyo stories, all of them about universal topics from the lives of various somewhat marginal individuals, hard labor, struggle for survival, hope for a better future, love, passion, violence, sex and life which unstoppably goes on, were turned by Novotny and Surfers into a fantastic new piece, very dynamic and cleverly edited and additionally exciting due to a vast use of film procedures characteristic of experimental film. ' vast use..' in this case doesn´t mean aggressive, although we witnessed at least three legendary scenes /color-mixer, cock fight and the unforgettable number with Mexican dancer/ in which this kind of procedures contributed to bursts of excitement and enthusiasm.

Being familiar with his earlier work / don´t be ignorant, familiarize yourself / I have to conclude that little Timo has grown up! Right beside surprise effect there was a sense of his confident use of the material, characters, story, which finally encompassed us entirely, and, which is really very rare for me, enticed a bit of healthy empathy. And Sofa Surfers added sound to the picture so well that they 'achieved the effect of being present even when there couldn´t be heard a single tone from the speakers', as sensitively noticed by Mirna with whom I shared my enthusiasm and less than an hour later the first row on the sfsrfrs concert, which, I must add, was a dozen times better than the one in Močvara / damn it, what a crappy sound! /

However, the Zagreb concert should be thanked for the interview with the director of the film 'Life in Loops', Timo Novotny, who let us in on its creation, his plans for future and the secret of the ten-year long happy marriage with Sofa Surfers / "I am happy, although I don´t feel this album is the best they did! I, personaly, don´t get that much out of it!" /

……'I worked with Michael on the film 'Slugs', and later on "Workingman´s  Death, I even went with him to Nigeria, where the notorious scene with the open air slaughter house was filmed. I am a vegetarian, and two day prior to the shoot I had had nightmares, but everything was gone when I came there. Namely, it is the most natural kind of slaughter, very honest. I deeply appreciate Glawogger as an author, and therefore I chose his 'megacities' / in the competition was also Wenders 'Till the End of the World' / to present 'Displacement activities' at Cinedays in Brussels as a part of the concept of inclusion of European films in live-act. I experienced some problems with the production company about getting the permission to use his materials, but Michael himself was very enthusiastic about the idea and helped me get the permission. That first version of live-mix was rather dirty, wrecked!''

Life in Loops, Timo Novotny, color mixer

'It is not easy to deal with a sensitive subject in this way. I chose this approach to the film to reach younger audience, fifteen year old, twenty something year old, and let them see a cool film which would make them think about certain issues. Because of this desire it was mainly shown to them. Generally, I think there should be more experimenting with narrative form, young authors should be given a chance to express it in that manner and consequently it would indirectly influence the perception of a bit different feature film. Film premier of 'Life in Loops' happened at DIAGONALE in Graz; I hoped, I was almost ready for not so good reviews, for nagging about certain solutions I had chosen for some film situations, which are not an ordinary way of narrating a story. This was the first time that somebody arranged in this way a completely new narrative film. It was quite opposite, the film got a load of excellent reviews. I am presently only sorry that I hadn´t made it a bit more experimental'.

Life in Loops, Timo Novotny, prizor iz ruske tvornice, ujedno ovdje služi i kao podsjetnik na Novotnom toliko bitnu majku geometriju

Fertile cooperation with old Surfers lads on 'Life in Loops'. We´ve known each other for 20 years; they are the first ones to come to my mind when I think of any cooperation!' For Novotny is also a first big step towards features. So, bye, bye to limited six-minute films, welcome to the film story in its abundance of time! And it´s not that he isn´t scared, but the amount of luck is about the same. Anyway, he aimed at narrating a story even in his shorts, however, in a more specific way.

'Lately, I haven´t been following experimental production. In very little spare time that I have, since the entire last year of my life was swallowed by 'Life in Loops', I like to watch films like those made by the Coen brothers or Jim Jarmusch, and my personal all time favorite is Chris Marker´s 'Sans Soleil'. At film festivals I spend most of the time on documentaries, which is a form I would like to explore, but not literally. For a few years now I´ve wanted to make a film about travels, a tour, short stories that take place in a period of at least ten years...'

Now that you know all this you shouldn´t be surprised that his activity within VIDOK collective has faded away, because really, the rest of the gang is mainly focused on experimental film without significant signs that the situation could change. Besides, all of them act rather independently so that the group creation dynamic has simply died.

Well, some things never change. Don´t expect this guy to serve you next time with 'Wedding Crashers'! Or at least, let´s hope that Novotny won´t do it to us.. 'Life in Loops', but also his reflections on the future of film itself as a less linearly presented medium open to experiment gives us a fine dose of confidence.

Interview by Inesa Antić, Translated by: Miljenka Mika Buljevic
Zagreb, 04.04.2006.