Life in Loops – on DVD

This is a pure commercial for one of the most important documentaries from the last years. Timo Novotny’s film has been shown all over the world, it has been awarded for its innovation of the genre, it is a vision of the world we live in, it has a brilliant mind blowing, I would almost call it, montage, it breaks down rules about the unity of place and time, it’s a film for people who love the city and the genre of city films that started with Ruttmann’s film on Berlin, it is about people, citizens of the world, poor people, people with dreams, people who are suffering but survive.

The reason to write about this two year old film, is simply that the film is now available in a dvd version with an excellent bonus material. A booklet with a text from the director, clips from the first concerts by sofa surfers and Novotny to images, Novotny’s own explanation of principles and structure and a real gift – a conversation over 80 minutes between Michael Glawogger and Timo Novotny to the images of the film. Here is an edited intro of what the festival cph:dox wrote about the film:

‘Life in Loops’ is a remix of the award-winning Austrian 1997 documentary ‘Megacities’… where Michael Glawogger depicts the chaos of the world’s metropoles. Novotny complements 30% of material taken straight from the film (and re-edited) with 70 % as yet unseen footage in which he blends original shots unused by Glawogger with his own sequences (shot by Megacities cameraman Wolfgang Thaler) from Tokyo. ‘Life in Loops’ is an alternative interpretation of Glawogger’s footage. Using a loop to depict life in a big city, Novotny takes the viewer to strange, dark and otherwise impenetrable parts of Mexico City, New York, Moscow, Mumbai and Tokyo and presents a cast of characters…

Buy the film: http://www.sofasurfers.net/  More about the film: http://www.lifeinloops.com/