video
16 min
DV Pal
stereo, German
Germany 2007
Synopsis
„I was 17 and she was 16. It was summer, we lay at the beach and listened to the music of Elvis.“
That´s the slogan of the trailer for the Israeli film LEMON POPSICLE (original: ESKIMO LIMON), directed by BOAZ DAVIDSON in 1977. Nine more sequels of Lemon Popsicle followed in cooperation with West Germany – directed by several directors – because of the enormous success.
The films are set in the end of the fifties and follow three Israeli teenagers through adolescence, making their first experiences with girls, going to parties and becoming men. The main character is Benny, searching for the love of his life and always falling deeply in love with a girl. His friends are Momo, an Elvis looking lady-killer, who has different affairs and the nice, but a little bit too thick boy Johnny, who never has luck with the girls.
Most of the Germans know the films at the latest since various TV-repeats in the 80ties to 90ties and often saw them in their own adolescence.
POP CYCLES is an interview, set in the early nineties, which is mixed with some original scenes of the films. In course of time, the beginning monologue about the film and the characters transforms more and more into a seeming retrospect of the interviewed person, which plays with fiction and reality and creates an almost intimate atmosphere.
POP CYCLES is a kind of mental mimicry. Based on the viewing habits and the sum of media experiences of the viewer, the interview call up an association of a seeming making of by mixing it up with some original scenes of the film LEMON POPSICLE.
In an autodiegetic way, the seeming overconfident interviewed person talks about the film set, the characters of the film and the work with the director. By the way the viewer is influenced by verbal demonstrations and visual illustrations to internalize several stereotypical ideal conceptions
(„Of course I believe in love at the first sight …“)
Even the storybook characters of the shown original scenes are synchronized to the speakers text at important key scenes to intensify the effect and assert the speakers authority. („… the real love story, where you go through thick and thin …“)
Because of the used format of the seen and heard, the viewer feels save and gets uncritical involved with all his own wishes and memories.
After an emotional charged original scene in the middle of the film, the making of transforms more and more to an seeming retrospect of the interviewed person. He starts to tell his personal tale of woe about his broken relation ship. Along the way his story gets more intimate, the voice rather confident and his facial expression less drawling. Slowly the camera work, colouring and image quality change and the visual aesthetic of the interview and the original scenes are more evocative of a documentary or a personal home recording. All these changes happen noteless and are also supported by the storytelling to not anticipate the consumer. („We met each other at a film shot and when I saw her for the first time at the casting …“)
In the course of time the interviewed person qualifies the issued statements and stereotypical images. The avoidance of these romanticised conceptions he justifies by a heated description of the problems in the relationship. Nearly it seems that he wants absolve himself and his decisions by the sympathy of the viewer. („It was a kind of self protection, you know, …“)
During the interview the synchronisation of the actor change noteless. The beginning English original sound transforms to an English synchronisation and cross at the end the German voice over.
The recipient notices that as an irritation, which prompt himself to reinterpret the seen material as a wilful manipulation and cold-hearted bluff.