Experiencing Interruptions?

Pool Pop No. 1 a.k.a. Come Home

Pool Pop No. 1 a.k.a. Come Home is the first single of the queer-feminist Hamburg-based one-person-project THORD1S. The video to the three and a half minute 80s-pop-electronic-crossover-song was filmed in the abandoned pool of Thordis's dad's hotel in a small village in the north of Germany.
The melancholic yet energetic song with varying vocal moods from spoken word to epic choir is about loosing a beloved person and the ambivalence of knowing that they will never come back but still hoping they would - and how we are endangered to run dry thinking of the past.
Inspired by the sauna-test-scene of the series Stranger Things where the often topless swimming pool attendant Billie Hargrove is being locked in, also by his stepsister Max, to find out if he is being possessed by a demon, the film is an hommage to drag and drama.
The music video is a both gender and genre fluid attempt to capture the tension between solitude and self-sufficiency of both THORD1S as a solo-artist and the seemingly left behind swimming pool. Therefore, lots of the footage was created by instant composition shots: a dance duet with a saxophone or a mic, the camera at the same time observing, joining and interrupting the intimate emerging choreographies.

  • Laura Gericke
    Director
  • Thordis M. Meyer
    Director
  • Blaugrau Film GbR
    Producer
  • Thordis M. Meyer
    Producer
  • Thordis M. Meyer
    Key Cast
    "THORD1S"
  • Leon Daniel
    DOP
  • Diana C. Sánchez Solórzano
    Gaffer
  • Ronja Lahr
    Costumes
  • Lola Carola Schmid
    Costumes
  • Esther von der Decken
    Costume assistant
  • Theresa Bahmann
    Costume assistant
  • Tanja Masemann
    Hair/Make-Up
  • Tim Winnicker
    Grading
  • Laura Gericke
    Cutter
  • Leon Daniel
    Cutter
  • Project Type:
    Music Video
  • Runtime:
    3 minutes 39 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 19, 2020
  • Production Budget:
    0 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Germany
  • Country of Filming:
    Germany
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2.39:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes
Director Biography - Laura Gericke, Thordis M. Meyer

Thordis M. Meyer is a multidisciplinary performer and musician, born 1983 and based in Hamburg.

Their main project is the electronic solo-project THORD1S that evolved out of their final artistic exam in Performance Studies (MA, Universität Hamburg), shown at the theater venue Kampnagel in 2018. THORD1S has just partnered up with the queer-feminist booking agency EQ:booking and will continue to conceptualize songs, festival shows and music videos that question genres and job descriptions. Being part of Hamburgs free theater scene, Thordis M. Meyer has developed several own performances from 5 to 30 minutes in length, mostly solos but also e.g. a dance video with a choreography of ten, and starred as a dancer and/or singer in pieces of choreographers like Patricia C. Mai (Borderline and other pieces, shown in Sibíu, London, Rome, Palermo and Hamburg) or Yolanda Morales (2666, shown in Hamburg and Oaxaca, Mexico, soon in Pune, India).

In the theatre season 2020/21 Thordis will develop their first feature-length performance piece "Peristaltik" on voice and digestion in a club, funded by the Ministry of Culture and Media Hamburg. Thordis is alumna* of the German scholarship institution Studienstiftung and holds a diploma in Social and Economic Communication (University of the Arts Berlin).
____

Laura Gericke was born 1992 in Geseke, Germany.

Since 2018 she’s studying directing at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama (HfMT). 2018 she successfully completed her degree in Metropolitan Culture at HafenCity University in while already implements her own performances, installations, texts and short films. From 2016 to 2018 she worked as a freelance assistant director at Thalia Theater.

From 2013 to 2018 she was a scholarship holder of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

Her first short film in 2012 (directed by Elisa Porsche, Laura Gericke) was awarded the Audience Award at the Paderborn Short Film Festival in 2012. She gained her first stage experiences in the 2011/12 season at the Stadttheater Paderborn in Faust, the tragedy first part by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (director: Patrick Caputo) and in the 2012/13 season as Selma in Die Ratten by Gerhardt Hauptmann (director: Katja Lauken).

Her short film 'Gewurzel' was shown in 2019 as part of the Hamburg Architecture Summer.
The first performance created as part of directing studies ‘the lie is a climbing animal the skin is just a spot’ was invited to the Salon kleiner Michel Hamburg in 2019. With her self-written piece ‘imagine you were a fly on the wall’ she will be part of the finals of young talent competition in May 2020 of Theater in Drachengasse in Vienna.

Since 2020 she receives the Deutschlandstipendium from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research Germany.

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Director Statement

Shooting this song full of longing where they actually grew up, is quite a central aspect of the film. The pool had not been used for over 10 years and therefore is an astonishing symbol for being left alone, time passing by and how we can run dry thinking of the past.
The film is an attempt to capture all these big emotions and give the drama well-needed counterparts as well:
A big part of the footage was created by instant composition shots:
A dance duet with a saxophone completely surrounded by fog on a saturday night, the camera joining the dance.
A rather classy 90s music video dance and singing scene with only a microphone: dancing, screaming, on the floor, begging.
A live-session that shows THORD1S with their "normal" on stage set-up in the pool.
And then there is the sauna ...