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Oct
06
2008

Short Film, Short Review.  Sitges 2008:  DIE SCHNEIDER KRANKHEIT

Posted by Todd Brown at 10:03am.

Posted in Film & DVD Reviews , Cult, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Continental Europe & Russia, Sitges 2008.

On my first night here in Sitges I had the good fortune to run into Spanish cult film maker Cesar Velasco Broca, he of the much loved - and Cannes-playing - short film Avant Petalos Grillados.  Velasco Broca is one of the most distinctive film makers in the world today and so when he said he had to introduce me to his friend Javier Chillon, I knew I had to pay attention.  And, frankly, even if Velasco Broca hadn’t been the one to introduce us it would have taken less than a minute of Chillon’s film for me to realize that these two must be close.  In fact, while I haven’t confirmed this yet I’m reasonably confident that Chillon must have borrowed Velasco Broca’s vintage camera equipment to achieve the authentically grainy feel of Die Schneider Krankheit.

A mock-propaganda film, Die Schneider Krankheit is a stunningly - and lovingly - accurate reproduction of 1950s film techniques, a purported newsreel detailing the beginnings of a viral outbreak throughout Germany following the crash landing of a Russian space capsule containing an infected monkey.  Shot on grainy film stock in a long-since abandoned ratio, with seamless makeup effects and brilliantly squishy creature effects that could easily be the product of some forgotten 1950’s b-film, Die Schneider Krankheit perfectly captures the ‘We Can Do It’ attitude that marked the 1950s, an era when we still believed that technology would be the solution to all of our problems despite obvious evidence that it was actually a major cause of many.

Chillon has passed us a series of five lobby cards from the film for your perusal and enjoyment.  The images used on these are in color while the finished film is black and white, so they’re not precisely what you get in the film itself but it’s more than close enough to give you a good feel for it.

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Reader Comments

  1. Swarez 10/06/2008 @ 10:20am

    Link doesn’t work.

  2. Todd Brown 10/06/2008 @ 10:33am

    Patience, man!  It takes a second to build them!

  3. Swarez 10/06/2008 @ 10:55am

    I can’t wait that long!

  4. Swarez 10/06/2008 @ 10:57am

    I like how they color the black and white stills.

  5. Kurt Halfyard 10/06/2008 @ 11:45am

    They do look absolutely fabulous.

  6. Ichi-The-Killer 10/06/2008 @ 11:58pm

    I’ll see any film with a Chimp in it, lol jk it does look interesting though.

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