Acting
The foehn researcher paints watercolors in which he documents the state of the world and records his visions of what is happening, while he berates the Minister of the Interior savagely. The film tells the imaginary story of the Bavarian Jammersee in fragments. The nuclear missile “Herrsching 2” - the Bavarians have finally provided for their own defense - is to be stored in a depot at the Jammersee. However, this comes into conflict with the other plan to fill the Jammersee with the ashes of the six million murdered Jews.
The musicians of the ‚Art Ensemble of Chicago’ have been performing their portrayal of jazz from past and present since 1967, not unlike a journey backwards in time aroused by an ancestral call to the myths of Africa. But what happens before their concerts? NULL SONNE NO POINT is the magnificent chronicle of the preparation for a concert and invites us into the very heart of the music, following the musicians backstage, at their rehearsals and moments of privacy and concentration, seeking the fluctuating emotions before the music begins.
Dr. Riesenhuber, the State Secretary of the Bavarian Ministry of Culture, can think of nothing else but advancing his career and becoming a minister, despite the world being contaminated by nuclear radiation.
The year is 1978. Hartmut Geerken, director of the Goethe-Institut in Kabul, is on a mission. “We cannot change society, but we can change the landscape,” he says—literally. A trickster, a Don Quixote, Geerken approaches cultural work with playful defiance, forging deep mutual respect with a land foreign to most Europeans. The film follows him pushing a grand piano on a handcart for an impromptu concert with Afghan and German musicians, visiting a village artist, and meeting a famed tabla player—illiterate, yet musically eloquent beyond words. What begins as a whimsical journey becomes a poignant love letter to a country on the brink of irrevocable change—lighthearted, yet laced with melancholy.
