Corinna Schnitt

Living a Beautiful Life, 13:00, Color, Stereo

Special Mention

A subtle confrontation with the unbearable lightness of perfection, leaving us in a state where one can only yearn for sin.. (Jan Schuijren on behalf of Jury)

In ‘Lord of the Flies’, William Golding describes a group of children being washed ashore on a desert island, where they design their own social structure as if it were a natural process. It is remarkable to witness how quickly the theoretical ideal formulated by the children becomes blemished. Their society degenerates into a very cruel, unjust and violent one. As introduction to Living a beautiful life, Schnitt shows a fragment from Der Katzenprinz, a Czech-East-German film made in 1978. Here, as in a vision, we see the reverse; cheerful, naked children living in a paradise where even wild animals are free from cruelty. The fragment is rather over the top, and, due also to the imagery, recognizable as an exponent of 1970s ideas on freedom and happiness. Which in turn confronts us with the fact that, by now, these ideas have become rather tainted and have been superseded by sense of reality. Although? Has anything taken their place?