No more Butter Scenes

Video installation by Silke Schönfeld for FLURSTÜCKE 2024

Silke Schönfeld’s video installation is about intimacy, agreement and crossing boundaries in the context of the acting profession. In the setting of a PR interview, the rules of an unwritten script are increasingly disregarded. At the same time, the verbal exchange of blows is translated into a physical confrontation. Who is the perpetrator, who is the victim?

Filmwerkstatt Münster supported the production and curated it for FLURSTÜCKE 2024.

Around 35 years after the premiere of the film “The Last Tango in Paris” (1972), actress Maria Schneider spoke out for the first time about the sexual abuse she experienced during filming. Director Bernardo Bertolucci claimed that he had to keep his leading actress in the dark about how the infamous “butter scene” with co-star Marlon Brando would play out in order to capture her authentic frustration and anger. Brutality in directing as a relic from an archaic past? The #MeToo movement and the recent revelations about abusive working conditions on film sets and in theatres form the starting point for Silke Schönfel’s newly produced film. They illustrate how topical the issue is and how complex, as the credibility of the actors concerned is repeatedly called into question. If only because it is their profession to portray emotions.

NO MORE BUTTER SCENES (2024) examines the relationship between consensus and intimacy in the context of the acting profession. In the form of an intimate play starring Lola Fuchs and Mervan Ürkmez, the setting is based on the kind of PR interviews actors give to promote blockbusters. A genre all of its own that thrives on the tension between screen fiction and the stars’ self-staging as (supposedly) private individuals. The interview situation is insidiously deconstructed by Schönfeld. The verbal exchange of blows between the two actors develops on a physical level into a mixture of dance and combat. Exercises from intimacy coordination are staged as choreographies. NO MORE BUTTER SCENES illustrates the psychological complexity of structural abuse of power. The two actors take on the roles of witnesses and accomplices. Among other things, the question arises as to what extent it can also be one’s own ambitions that lead to complicity in such a case?

Silke Schönfeld studied fine arts at the art academies in Münster and Düsseldorf. Her works include the documentary short film ICH DARF SIE IMMER ALLES FRAGEN, which deals with an intimate, transgenerational trauma and was awarded the prize of the NRW Competition of the Oberhausen Short Film Festival and the German Short Film Award in 2023. For Ruhr Ding: Klima, she realised the three-part video installation FAMILY BUSINESS, which traces the development of a place: from the household goods shop to the fast food restaurant to the band rehearsal room. Schönfeld’s works have been presented in numerous art exhibitions and at film festivals, including the Goethe-Institut, Paris (France), Folkwang Museum, Essen (Germany), Garage Rotterdam (Netherlands), Building Bridges Art Exchange, Santa Monica (United States).

(Source: flurstücke.de)