Josef Dabernig
Pastry Friday (2022)

Video / Commissioned work

Dates
22.9.2022–12.2.2023

Details
S16 mm film transferred to HD video, stereo sound, 11′48″

Location
Neue Galerie Graz
Graz

Series
A War in the Distance: Exhibition

Production specifics
Commissioned and coproduced steirischer herbst ’22

Supported by the Federal Ministry of Arts and Culture, Civil Service and Sport (BMKOES) / Innovative Film Austria

An ominous atmosphere haunts the films of Josef Dabernig, including his newest. It shows a bright little moment in the uniform everyday overshadowed by high-rise apartments somewhere in Central Europe—a landscape whose infrastructures and inhabitants are slowly eroding under the pressures of a hard life.

In such a forbidding place, customers meet to have coffee and cake in a pastry shop. Not only prams but also pensioners’ walkers are parked by the door, as people from all generations congregate there on a Friday afternoon. The score unfolds to close-ups of the protagonists’ arms, hands, and faces, with cuts to the seductive sweets—moments of transgression rescued from court cultures and spread throughout the former empire, be it Austria, Hungary, or the Czech Republic, where the film was made.

Then and now, these comfort pastries represent short, delicious instances of life—aesthetic experiences in miniature, themselves a little suspect—counteracting the overwhelming sense of threat and finitude that always dwells slightly beyond reality’s edges.

Written, directed, edited, and produced by Josef Dabernig
Production assistant Czech Republic: Ivana Hrončeková
Camera: Christian Giesser
Sound design: Michael Palm
Cast (in order of appearance): Štefan Kurbel, Hedwig Saxenhuber (service), Kurt Fellinger, Georg Schöllhammer (table 5), Lore Dabernig, Otto Dabernig, Isabella Hollauf (table 4), Jolana Chalupová, René Chalupová, Ivana Hrončeková (table 3), Markéta Lisá, Filip Cenek, Matěj Cenek, Jakub Cenek (table 2), Dobroslav Chrobák, Emilie Chrobáková, Ondřej Chrobák, Jana Písaříková, Jiří Valoch (table 1)
Location: Cukrárna Severka, Blansko
Film development and scan: cinegrell GmbH
Color grading: Matthias Tomasi
Re-recording mixer: Alexander Koller
Postproduction: The Grand Post

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