FILM FOCUS ANGELA SCHANELEC
La Casa Encendida, November 25–29
On the occasion of the presentation of the Márgenes Special Award to Angela Schanelec, a focus is dedicated to the early works of the German filmmaker (never released in Spain), where she defines her own language based on ellipsis, silence, and the observation of time. A fascinating journey through the beginnings of a singular creator who turns the everyday into mystery and thought, inviting us to view cinema as a space for contemplation.
On the occasion of the presentation of the Márgenes Special Award to Angela Schanelec, a focus is dedicated to the early works of the German filmmaker (never released in Spain), where she defines her own language based on ellipsis, silence, and the observation of time. A fascinating journey through the beginnings of a singular creator who turns the everyday into mystery and thought, inviting us to view cinema as a space for contemplation.
Ellipsis and its silent conquest
General notes on what Angela Schanelec’s cinema does not tell
By Pela del Álamo
Angela Schanelec’s cinema breathes in the gaps, is built upon emptiness, and finds its meaning in the interstices, in what remains unsaid, in everything that slips through the frames. Her gaze settles into silence, and from there she constructs a way of narrating that rests on absence. In contrast to the explanatory impulse of contemporary cinema, her work seems determined to remain quiet, trusting that the viewer will know how to read the silent murmur of all that happens between the images. Ellipsis, for her, is not a formal device: it is an ethic, a way of being in the world.
A member of the so-called Berlin School, Schanelec shares with her contemporaries a search for distance, a will to observe life without taming it through plot. But her singularity lies in carrying that gesture to its limits, turning emptiness into expressive matter. Her films, far from proposing discourses or shaping closed narratives, open up as spaces of contemplation where human experience is fragmented in silence.
From her first feature, Das Glück meiner Schwester (1995), Schanelec announces her poetics: emotional and familial bonds appear stripped of all psychology. The camera observes, lets things happen, interrupts. Events—when they occur—dissolve in the cut, and what is essential happens offscreen. Here, ellipsis already acts as breath: a way of looking that rejects explanation and accepts the opacity of gestures. What others would turn into conflict, she turns into an interval.
In Plätze in Städten (1998), the next film in the focus we present, ellipsis becomes more refined: the life of a young woman in transit is told through scattered fragments, as if the narrative were composed of what remains between movements. Each shot is an island, a moment in suspension where time seems to stop. Schanelec thus constructs a cinema of drift, where continuity does not arise from story but from a sensitivity that observes the passing of time, everything that does not occur within the plot.
Time is, precisely, the territory in which ellipsis becomes structure. In her cinema, editing does not link but separate; it does not explain but allows resonance. Ellipsis is the cut that gives the viewer space to inhabit the image, to prolong it with their imagination. In that suspended space between one shot and the next resides the purest emotion in her work: the certainty that life unfolds at the margins of the visible.
With Marseille (2004), this search reaches a precise maturity. The narration breaks down into a sequence of interrupted presences, where the external journey reflects an inner displacement. The city and the face become surfaces where time folds. Each cut is a loss and a revelation. Silence is no longer a void but a way of thinking: a strategy to film the invisible, to render perceptible what cannot be shown directly. Schanelec builds an emotional ellipsis, a fabric of gaps where meaning emerges through accumulation.
From Der traumhafte Weg (2016) onward, ellipsis radicalizes to become a structural principle. Time is no longer ordered but fragmented; characters do not evolve but overlap. Editing acts like a system of memory, where images follow one another without apparent causality, joined by a secret logic. Ellipsis ceases to be mere omission and becomes material for thought. Rather than representing the world, Schanelec seeks to capture its discontinuity.
Throughout her filmography, ellipsis evolves from stylistic gesture to ontological substance. In her early works it serves to avoid narrative linearity; later it becomes the very condition of experience. Schanelec does not film stories but the impossibility of telling them. Her films are attempts to retain something that always escapes: a look, an emotion, a moment of consciousness.
General notes on what Angela Schanelec’s cinema does not tell
By Pela del Álamo
Angela Schanelec’s cinema breathes in the gaps, is built upon emptiness, and finds its meaning in the interstices, in what remains unsaid, in everything that slips through the frames. Her gaze settles into silence, and from there she constructs a way of narrating that rests on absence. In contrast to the explanatory impulse of contemporary cinema, her work seems determined to remain quiet, trusting that the viewer will know how to read the silent murmur of all that happens between the images. Ellipsis, for her, is not a formal device: it is an ethic, a way of being in the world.
A member of the so-called Berlin School, Schanelec shares with her contemporaries a search for distance, a will to observe life without taming it through plot. But her singularity lies in carrying that gesture to its limits, turning emptiness into expressive matter. Her films, far from proposing discourses or shaping closed narratives, open up as spaces of contemplation where human experience is fragmented in silence.
From her first feature, Das Glück meiner Schwester (1995), Schanelec announces her poetics: emotional and familial bonds appear stripped of all psychology. The camera observes, lets things happen, interrupts. Events—when they occur—dissolve in the cut, and what is essential happens offscreen. Here, ellipsis already acts as breath: a way of looking that rejects explanation and accepts the opacity of gestures. What others would turn into conflict, she turns into an interval.
In Plätze in Städten (1998), the next film in the focus we present, ellipsis becomes more refined: the life of a young woman in transit is told through scattered fragments, as if the narrative were composed of what remains between movements. Each shot is an island, a moment in suspension where time seems to stop. Schanelec thus constructs a cinema of drift, where continuity does not arise from story but from a sensitivity that observes the passing of time, everything that does not occur within the plot.
Time is, precisely, the territory in which ellipsis becomes structure. In her cinema, editing does not link but separate; it does not explain but allows resonance. Ellipsis is the cut that gives the viewer space to inhabit the image, to prolong it with their imagination. In that suspended space between one shot and the next resides the purest emotion in her work: the certainty that life unfolds at the margins of the visible.
With Marseille (2004), this search reaches a precise maturity. The narration breaks down into a sequence of interrupted presences, where the external journey reflects an inner displacement. The city and the face become surfaces where time folds. Each cut is a loss and a revelation. Silence is no longer a void but a way of thinking: a strategy to film the invisible, to render perceptible what cannot be shown directly. Schanelec builds an emotional ellipsis, a fabric of gaps where meaning emerges through accumulation.
From Der traumhafte Weg (2016) onward, ellipsis radicalizes to become a structural principle. Time is no longer ordered but fragmented; characters do not evolve but overlap. Editing acts like a system of memory, where images follow one another without apparent causality, joined by a secret logic. Ellipsis ceases to be mere omission and becomes material for thought. Rather than representing the world, Schanelec seeks to capture its discontinuity.
Throughout her filmography, ellipsis evolves from stylistic gesture to ontological substance. In her early works it serves to avoid narrative linearity; later it becomes the very condition of experience. Schanelec does not film stories but the impossibility of telling them. Her films are attempts to retain something that always escapes: a look, an emotion, a moment of consciousness.
