The intoxication caused by film consumption hasn’t quite worked out yet.

Even if you are very delighted by what you see there.

And you can get a bit dizzy in the whirlpool of film scenes that draws visitors in the middle of the room like, as the cliché goes, the unsuspecting surfer attracts the shark.

Who is happy that his breakfast is even served on a colorful breakfast board.

The shark in this children's joke has to be a German shark, he knows the morning platter tradition.

Eva Maria Magel

Senior cultural editor of the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

  • Follow I follow

The sharks that are now circling us in the German Film Institute and Film Museum (DFF) come mainly, but not exclusively, from Hollywood.

Sharks and killer whales, piranhas and giant alligators are some of the horrors of the water that have reliably reigned supreme in film for almost a hundred years, and there are plenty of them to see in the DFF's new special exhibition "Im Tiefenrausch".

Plus all the horrors from the underwater realm of fantasy, monsters, sea monsters - and of course the immense sea itself.

Water, the elixir of life and pleasure, can be terrifying, and not just when it spurts through the hatches of a submarine in increasingly threatening jets.

A bathtub and an unhappily tangled shower hose are enough for a tragedy - and a wondrous wave, flying fish or a colorful coral reef can represent so much beauty that man cannot get enough of it.

The beauty and terror of water

Everything is there, the beauty and the horror of the water, in this panorama, it shimmers at every nook and cranny, and it is not surprising why the moving image very early in its history, even before the 20th century, the sea discovered for himself.

"Mobilis in mobili" is the motto of Captain Nemo's Nautilus, and it could also be the motto for the moving image that moves as early as a fish in water.

DFF curator Michael Kinzer must have viewed hundreds of films that have something to do with water and everything under the water surface to put together the panorama that can magically draw us in.

Doesn't the round of the projection surfaces in dark, reflective vinyl look like a water surface itself?

Aren't those comfy, aqua blue beanbags like big drops we can sink into and spend hours watching exploding boats, singing and dancing cartoon fish, couples kissing underwater, or an almost real-life mermaid from a technicolor musical film?

The scenes always run in thematic pairings over the four segments, it is an almost immersive pleasure, and we may still get to the point where we reach the ecstatic, intoxicating and at the same time frightening mood that is called "Tiefenrausch" and with itself dives from about 20 meters depth.

If you sit longer in the dark on the drops, the promise of the title will be kept.

Kinzer and his art team are serious when they say that it takes at least three hours to take in everything from "sink and drown" to "dream and dance" to "pool eroticism and couple idyll".

All around the walls, a good thirty digital screens explain in film excerpts what is behind the pairs of terms.

And those who dare to literally immerse themselves in the deep darkness of a small chamber behind curtains can listen for almost 40 minutes to a wonderful installation by the Lebanese artist Rana Eid, who is a sound engineer and film director, what her sound collage "Vortex: Cities And Memories" says. definitely noted.

With four colleagues from Lebanon, between gurgling and splashing, hooting and shimmering, she traces the essence of water in the water city of Beirut, the feeling

that you personally develop towards the water.

The text, spoken in Arabic, can be read on the exhibition's homepage.

A click that is definitely worth it: it reveals the wealth of offers related to "Im Tiefenrausch".

A film series lavishly stocked with classics from John Huston's "Moby Dick" (1956) to Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" (1975) to Wes Anderson's "Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou" (2004) in the month of July alone.

The Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, once again a partner of the DFF after "Katastrophe", is always present for film talks with marine researchers from the high and deep seas, there are workshops in both museums, further digital routes and a cooperation with the Museum Wiesbaden, which is currently "Water in Art Nouveau" shows.

Cared for in this way, if we aren't confused by the rapture of the deep, we'll finally know more about whether sharks really are as dangerous and dolphins as pals as films have shown us for decades.

And why art, including the seventh, loves water so much.

The exhibition "Im Tiefenrausch" can be seen at the German Film Institute and Film Museum in Frankfurt until January 8, 2023.

The extensive accompanying program can be found at Tiefenrausch.dff.film.