Exit Only

86 minutes, BetaSP, 4:3, colour, PAL

Summer, 1997. As part of a cultural exchange program between Austria and Zimbabwe, we accompanied musicians and composers Peter Androsch, Keith Goddard, Klaus Hollinetz, Lukas Ligeti, and Werner Puntigam on a trip to Siachilaba, a small Tonga settlement in northwestern Zimbabwe. In the previous year, five pieces of music had taken shape in Austria, reflections on an earlier journey to Zimbabwe, its special living conditions and circumstances, and the Tonga's Ngoma Buntibe music. The „mutual“ musical performances in the Tonga village literally culminated in a trip the Tonga music group Simonga made to Austria shortly afterwards where they took part in a one-week hiking tour across the Tote Gebirge mountain range.

The Tonga project, which is designed to unfold over a period ten years, is so special in that messages between the people and cultures of Austria and Zimbabwe are mediated by artists and through music and film. On a creative level, we see expressions of the fact that encounters with others and foreign worlds always mean to also encounter our own selves. While we talk about traveling Zimbabwe and Austria, we do not forget how very different our forms of perception and filming are.

Michael Pilz, Thomas Schneider,
Vienna,
November 1998

As I seldom produce material for TV and this film was expressly intended to be put together from source footage of more than 70 hours for this use, I invited Thomas to join me in editing it. He brought along film material of his own and we tried, from distinctly different positions, to fashion a joint product without blurring the breaking points. This, among others, accounts for the suspense this film brings to viewers.

Michael Pilz, Thomas Schneider,
Vienna,
August 2005

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Original title Exit Only
English title Exit Only
Produced by Michael Pilz
Concept and realization by Michael Pilz and Thomas Schneider
Cinematography by Michael Pilz and Thomas Schneider
Original sound by Michael Pilz and Thomas Schneider
Edited by Michael Pilz and Thomas Schneider

Austria 1998
Language Englisch, German, Tonga, Shona
German subtitles (only in German version)

First public screening 5 November, 1998, ORF Austrian Television

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