Experiencing Interruptions?

Das Resort

An unnamed narrator in a small, undisclosed mountain village examines his life from three different points in time; from his childhood, his adult life, and from his old days. As he jumps back and forth, in and out of time, non-linear memories surrounding his long-lost father and the events that took place in a virus-ridden, dystopian world begin to take shape. The exhaustive and introspective search eventually leads him back to a place of fond childhood recollection, a cabin found in perfect peace where he can dream again.

  • Mathias Kessler
    Director
  • Ron Kaneke
    Writer
  • Mathias Kessler
    Producer
  • Thees Leuchtenberg
    Key Cast
    "Young Kid voice over"
  • Oskar Leber
    Key Cast
    "Young Man Voice over"
  • Freimut Goetsch
    Key Cast
    "Old Man Voice over"
  • Helmut Gundolf
    Key Cast
    "Old man in Hut"
  • Thilo Kessler
    Key Cast
    "Kid in Film"
  • Clemens Paul
    Director of Photography
  • Michael Saia
    Editor
  • Nick Saia
    Music
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Sci-Fi, short, horror, experimental, art house
  • Runtime:
    22 minutes 2 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    May 15, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    50,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Austria
  • Country of Filming:
    Austria
  • Language:
    English, German
  • Shooting Format:
    RED
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
  • Kunsthaus Graz
    Graz
    Austria
    May 15, 2022
Distribution Information
  • Heike Strelow Galerie
    Sales Agent
    Country: Worldwide
    Rights: All Rights
Director Biography - Mathias Kessler

Mathias Kessler (b. 1968, Austria) is a New York and Europe-based filmmaker and media artist who critiques and reimagines the concept of nature. His films and media works mediate between the history of image production and how it affects our ecology and economy. Quoting from art history, philosophy, and eco-political debates, Kessler re-stages representations of natural processes. Romantic painting, land art, and digital renderings compete and collide to unhinge familiar oppositions such as nature and culture, representation and experience, and ideology and aesthetics. Kessler’s contribution to current utopian and dystopian debates is at once intelligent, grave, comic, and visually stunning. In his films, the degrading natural environment, places that would be called “paradise,” takes center stage. For example, in his film “The Night of the Iguana Revisited,” Kessler visited the secluded film set and nearby resort town to photograph the decaying man-made paradise, placing the present in conversation with the fading memory of its object of desire, itself a mere simulacrum of an exotic idyll. His film “The Resort” documents the emptiness of ski resorts during the pandemic, thus, disclosing our human traces as never-fading.

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Director Statement

This project was conceptualized during the first lockdown of the Covid pandemic. Through the heaviness of the isolation and conversations with my four year old son and my mother who was diagnosed with cancer, I was inspired to create this dystopian piece. As a reference point, I used the new wave film “La Jette”, which led me to question the division between life and death. Thus, “The Resort” examines the political discourse of the pandemic, cinematic references like zombie apocalypses as well as personal debates with life and death.