Fred Kelemen: Nightfall / Abendland

Fred Kelemen, Nightfall, 1999. © the artist

Kelemen’s third feature is a devastating, tender and sublime masterpiece. Expanding the location to Portugal integrates the Fado tradition of love and death ballads into this depiction of a single night in the lives of an estranged couple. Combining 35mm long-takes with video close-ups, the black depravity of the night surrounds them like a long sad song.

One of the boldest German filmmakers of the last 20-years, critic Susan Sontag compared Kelemen’s “urgently relevant” work to Sokurov and collaborator Bela Tarr. He garnered attention for his 1990s trilogy - Fate, Frost and Nightfall.

Believing in “time and not in speed”, meditations on human dissolution, cruelty and loneliness unfold at somnambulant pace. Set amongst Europe’s late-capitalist underclass of the unemployed and dispossessed, he captures nocturnal urban low-life with beauty.

Kelemen is present throughout the weekend to introduce and discuss his work, in conversation with film critic Jonathan Romney.

Dir. Fred Kelemen, 140mins + Q&A, 1999

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