A new film by the Kreuzlingen performer Micha Stuhlmann: “Death intensifies life”

Micha Stuhlmann lets nine people talk about death: her film «Death. His », with Raphael Zürcher in front of the camera, is not only heavy fare. It is intense, but also colorful and sometimes with a floating lightness. The film premieres on Thursday at Kult-X Kreuzlingen.

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Watch a film about death after the third corona wave has subsided? Yes absolutely! The film «Death. His »the Kreuzlingen performer Micha Stuhlmann is intense, pushes the boundaries, but is also colorful, lively, life-affirming. He wants to celebrate transience and encourage reflection. With success and entertaining.

Corona has further increased the anonymity of death, it is even more taboo than it has always been in our part of the world. Distancing has also had an impact on how we deal with dying. Very many died very alone during this time. Micha Stuhlmann says: “Thinking about death provokes the intensity of life.” In her “Laboratory for Species Conservation” in Kreuzlingen, she has been working for a long time with laypeople who appear in her performances and who often outgrow themselves in the process.

Organ Donation and Suicidal Practices

Directing a film is a new experience for Micha Stuhlmann. “Unlike an evening at the theater, the film thinks in cuts. I had to get used to that. ” Nine amateur actors speak in «Death. Being »about dying, their fears, their certainties, their wishes and doubts. Topics such as organ donation and suicide practices come up as well as ideas of how death actually is when he knocks.

Micha Stuhlmann’s film (with Raphael Zürcher at the camera) does not appear gloomy or heavy, but rather light and floating in many passages. Not morbid at all, but ridiculous and pushing the limits. For Micha Stuhlmann, who comes from dance as a performer, the body and its language are the starting point for her work.

“I have to develop a common language with my actors in the process”.

There is a different animal organ on each plate

Your actors have been developing the table conversations about death and dying since 2018. Stuhlmann places them in a choreography that is reminiscent of the image of Jesus’ Last Supper. People are drinking, the topics evolve seemingly casually. It becomes macabre when the roasted chicken is cut up.

“Where’s his ghost now,” someone asks. Micha Stuhlmann actually feels like dissecting, not just the subject of death, but also other innards. In another scene there is a different animal organ on each plate. Your crew speaks openly and honestly and out of inner conviction, but also with all ignorance about this transition from life to perhaps another form of existence.

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Micha Stuhlmann says that she strives to always push the limits in her work and that she likes to work with them. She has been concerned with the subject of death since childhood. There she acted out funeral scenes. Both parents died while working on their film. Micha Stuhlmann knows all about death, thinks about the fasting of her own death, but also speaks of the “poetry of mortality” and wants to stimulate self-reflection in the viewer with her film, to take him by the hand, take him away from the widespread, repressive notion of death as an “incident” or “unsuccessful circumstance”.