Anima – Symphonie Fntastique

A young man — the archetype of the soldier and bachelor — searches for the Anima, the eternally unattainable woman who appears alternately as virgin, whore, mother, saint, and witch. In his illusions and visions, composed of multilayered and ambiguous imagery, the Anima transforms from a romantic ideal into a technically two-dimensional, reproducible image — half woman, half sewing machine.

The visualization of the so-called “myth of the bachelor machine” unfolds in the tension between Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique (1830) and Marcel Duchamp’s The Large Glass (1920). The creators of these works — two antagonistic representatives of bachelor solitude — confront one another within the film.

This experimental film was created according to the technical and dramaturgical parameters of the “layering method” developed by Titus Leber and was first presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 1981 as part of the Official Selection.