Love’s Debris

Three divas on the set of Royaumont Abbey in Düsseldorf work in an area chosen by the director, accompanied by the person closest to them. “I wanted to pay homage to all the singers who have influenced my life, particularly Martha Mödl, Rita Gorr, Anita Cerquetti, and our holy ghost, Maria Callas. I wanted to emphasise their humanity, which is expressed through their voices as they search for love. [...] That’s why, for the film, I asked the singers to bring the people they loved most in their lives. Great art and marvellous singing are nothing more than ‘love dust.’” — W. Schroeter.

Duration: 130’
Production year: 1996
Country: DE, FR, UK
Language: FR, EN, DE, IT, RU Subtitles: PT

Locarno Film Festival 1996 – Official Selection
Vienna Film Festival 2008 – Werner Schroeter Retrospective

Werner Schroeter

Central to the New German Cinema of the 1970s, Werner Schroeter was born in 1945 into a German bourgeois family and died in 2010. He studied psychology for three terms at the University of Mannheim before abandoning his studies to enrol at the Munich Film School, which he left after just three weeks. In 1967, he attended the Knokke Experimental Film Festival, where he discovered the New American Cinema—particularly Twice a Man (1964) by Gregory J. Markopoulos. This experience opened Schroeter to a filmmaking practice that was both poetic and personal. His cinematic oeuvre was later characterised as an exploration of the elemental forces of love, death, and life, enriched by diverse apparitions and utopian visions. The support of German television in the 1970s enabled him to direct his first masterpiece, The Death of Maria Malibran (1971), starring Montezuma. Between his first feature film and his arduous final journey with This Night(2008), any list of Schroeter’s best works must include his neo-realist saga The Reign of Naples (1979), Die Generalprobe (1980), King of Roses (1986), and his final masterpieces, Malina (1991) and Deux (2002), both featuring powerful performances by Isabelle Huppert.

Original title: Poussières d'amour - Abfallprodukte der Liebe

Werner Schroeter

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