„I want to get to know the dark sides in us humans because these dark places are alive. They are life.”

What is reality? What is game? Where are the boundaries? When does one turn into the other? What am I – or do I do as if I was? Do I live or do I “make” Life and don’t  realize the difference?

Tanja (Mira Gittner), Jessie (Marina Anna Eich), Anna (Sabine Krappweis), Marcus (Christoph Baumann) and Kai (Manfred Gebauer) go into a sealed off abandoned barrack to play the “Big Game” – a game aside any social norms or boundaries.

“In the time outside you have been bent by social rules. Here in the Barracks of

freedom there are no rules. If you need some, create them…”

Each protagonist has his own game, his own version , to get advantage over the other : Jessie tries through sexual seduction, Anna through exercising power, Marcus by enacting rules, Tanja by keeping out of everything. Kai is the weakest link in the group and becomes everyone’s victim.

Searching the „Big Game“ they embroil more and more into the interpersonal games

and are slowly being drawn into the perfidious alcoves of their “inner spaces”.

What began as a harmless game, ends in a too real tragedy.

tragedy
118 min, 2003, 35mm, color, in german

 

locations:    Landsberg/Lech, München
world sales: wtp international GmbH, München

director	Roland Reber
author	Roland Reber
producer	Patricia Koch
music	Wolfgang Edelmayer
cinematographer	Roland Reber, Mira Gittner, Christoph Baumann
editor / visual effects               .	Mira Gittner
line producer	Ute Meisenheimer

The Dark Side of our Inner Space is a metaphor for the “Big Game” we call life. A study of the dark sides of our souls.

He:“ I didn't give them rules. They could have created ones themselves.

They could have spent a beautiful, adventurous, joyful time here.

But they've chosen fight, intrigues and finally death.”

Tanja:“ Where does it start?

Does the BIG GAME start with our birth and we aren't realising it?

We subdivide life in right, real, dream - game.

But where does one end, where does the other begin?

Nobody asked you if you wanted to take part in the Game called life.

Maybe the game was there before you. Maybe it will go on after death.

Where is the beginning. Where the end? And where - the winner?

“Welcome… to the BARRACKS that are called freedom.

Lot of people applied but you have been chosen. Chosen for the BIG GAME.

Since you were born you have been forced into a corset of rules.

You have been bent, forced and formed.

In the time outside you have been bent by social rules.

Here in the BARRACKS OF FREEDOM there are no rules.

If you need some, create them…

What is the BIG GAME? How do you participate?

These are questions that I won't answer.

Search for the door, find the access.

“To search" is an important word in life...

I wish a successful search. And I hope that you'll reach the BIG GAME.

Good luck.”

PRESS  NOTE

- lost souls in the fun and entertainment jungle of today’s so-called developed civilization, without any participation and  comprehension of Life and the Self -

The basic idea of the film was, to bring a group of young people of the fun society into a sealed off field. In this isolation, without disturbing influences from society, the “Big Game” should take place, without any rules, without distraction through external stimulus and without specification, what the “Big Game” could be.

All on their own, the single characters should try in different ways, to find out : what is game? What is reality? Where are the boundaries? Who am I, if I am not committed to any  external constraints and games of society ? Am I able to exist without structure and predefinition? What am I supposed to do with myself?

This film gives no answers, it asks questions.

Most people do not have answers, they do not even have questions.

The Dark Side of our Inner Space had its world premiere at the 9. Calcutta International Filmfestival in November 2003 in India, and was received ,there and on other festivals, enthusiastically by press, professionals and cinema audience.