Ute Aurand

A montage of brief recollections filmed in the years before the death of my mother in 2000 and the death of my father in 2007. I stand as an adult in the midst of childhood feelings, gazing at the disappearance of my family home and the changing relation to my parents.

"More than any other single film that I have seen so far in this year's Wavelengths programs, Ute Aurand's achingly lovely Hanging upside down in the Branches is a paradigmatic example of programmer Andréa Picard's unique vision. Perhaps too personal, too domestic, to register with certain other tastemakers, Hanging upside down in the Branches is precisely the kind of "small" film too often overlooked because of the fundamental modesty of its approach. (...) Aurand is zeroing in on the absolutely singular, exquisite textures of the daily life around her  - (...) Separated by white flash-frames, individual moments pop like fleeting revelations, the seconds whose very preciousness is defined by their ineffability.  (...) Hanging upside down in the Branches is, in some way, a diary film, but one that records sensual phenomena rather than narrative event. Or, perhaps more properly stated, Aurand generates flashes of illumination, collecting them from the slow drift of everyday existence, allowing them to achieve a hieratic character. And yet, in their filmic arrangement, in the assembly and temporal re-experience, they become a different kind of narrative, a story of us all that insists on absolute particularity, insisting that these images only mean anything because they are of these people who Aurand has deeply loved."  Michael Sicinski, TIFF 2009

"(..) Hanging Upside Down in the Branches concerns the aging and death of the filmmaker's parents, but as is her wont, Aurand keeps the focus loose. The passage of time is noted (with the help of family photographs) amid a host of other moments, both quotidian and inspired, as when (thanks to deft deployment of superimposition and montage) a snowfall explodes into vibrant pools of colored light, which then resolve into the panes of a stained glass window. As always in Aurand's work, a seemingly casual precision creates a loving intimacy in which aging and death take their rightful places among the things of this world." David Pendleton, guest programmer of the Flaherty Seminar 2016

" (...) regarding Aurand’s film, it is almost difficult to take in so much grace and gentleness in such concentrated form. Kopfüber im Geäst is an intimist portrait of sorts of her parents that revolves around the passing of time, of their becoming old and their eventual absence. It is a film
that holds on, that clings to the most fleeting of moments; yet it is precisely this fleetingness, or the impossibility to hold on to and store them, that is celebrated; what is seized is already gone while being seized; an eternal present, but one brimming over with absence. The eventual absence of the parents also appears to imbue everything with an excess of meaning: memories, places (a room, a cabinet, a shattered wall), bushes, snow, shadows; an absence felt, mourned over, yet accepted, come to terms with; embraced, maybe; and all that is contained within the world of the film appears to bear witness to it. Voiceless, soundless, that hydrangea is curling in the wind, that snow is falling down; Yes, they seem to exclaim, to cry out, we witnessed their passing, and we mourn with you, yet we must remain unfazed; we cannot give in – (...) Simon Wiener, Jugend ohne Film, 2021

– arsenal distribution