Freie Zeiten

A girl band makes music. Women at a slimming course talk about successfully losing weight by controlling what they eat. Teenagers dance or go shopping. A role-play on conflicts at work is performed at a meeting of a men’s group. Other people do yoga, meditate to the sound of Tibetan singing bowls, limber up by babbling gibberish or run laps in a gymnasium. A documentary that trains its gaze on group leisure activities. There’s something slightly insane about seeing an entire yoga class hanging upside down from ropes, an image that fascinates and alienates in equal measure. At moments like this, the protagonists come across like unknown creatures performing strange rituals. The film keeps watching and listening to them with true precision. The static camera and carefully considered framings generate clarity and concentration. The montage succeeds in bringing a feeling of abstraction into these concrete observations of recurring situations. A portrait of free time as a project designed to hone one’s body, consciousness or performance skills emerges, whether through discipline, play or conversation. One would never have thought that research into leisure could be so visually rich. berlinale 2015