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• Meeting in Petalidi
• This Is How I See, How I Remember My World
• The House
• With Love #3
• Teatime Teheran
• Three Days, My Friend
• Curtains
• Bertien van Manen – Photographer
• With Love – Volume One 1987–1996
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• As-If-Not
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• 28 April 1995 Aus Liebe / For Love
• Memories Of You 7 December 2003
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• Not a Film — Patchwork. Dziga Vertov
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• » Complete list of films

Teatime Teheran

DCP, 17 minutes
16:9, colour, stereo

In the context of her project For Some Friends (2008) Gabriele Hochleitner filmed Michael Pilz inside the house of Persian film director, musician, and poet Khosrow Sinai, who had been a friend since 1964. Khosrow passed away from Covid 19 in the summer of 2020 in Teheran.
“I subsequently compiled all the video footage I had recorded of him between 2007 and 2019, along with other material about him, and gave the resulting roughly six-hour compilation to his widow, painter Gizella Varga-Sinai.
This included the scenes that Gabriele Hochleitner had filmed when she put together a portrait of me for her film For Some Friends (2008). So this is how, more by accident than by design, I came across these seventeen minutes from October 2007.
In the end, I decided to dedicate Teatime Teheran to sculptor Karl Prantl, who passed away in 2010. We had been friends since the 1960s and I had always felt the highest regard for him, both as an artist and as a wonderful human being. In the late 1980s I had made two films with him (Der Lauf des Wassers/ Watercourse Way and 80 cm 5 t/Eighty Centimeters Five Tons). His adage that help is art has been with me for many years now, and it also forms the final conclusion of my reflections on artistic activity in general and my own filmmaking in particular.”

Michael Pilz, Vienna, August, 2021

On filming other people: ‘Looking others in the eye’ has to do with feeling at home with oneself and trusting others. Can I even present myself to others the way I really am? Are others – actually – taking me seriously? Am I able to trust others myself? It's all based on reciprocity, because other people will perceive me the way I present myself to them. And I will experience others as they reveal themselves to me. Thus, it’s all about your own openness towards others. This openness (or reticence) has to do with (past) experiences: Was my candor (or reserve) received by others? Or was it ignored? Did people try to empathize? And did I make them feel understood?

Michael Pilz, Retrospective 2023, Vienna

Original title Teatime Teheran
English title Teatime Teheran
Produced by Michael Pilz
Shooting time October, 2007
Shooting location Teheran, the House of Khosrow and Gizella Varga-Sinai
Cinematography by Gabriele Hochleitner
Original sound by Gabriele Hochleitner
Original language German
No subtitles
Edited by Michael Pilz
Music Anonymous

Austria 2007/2021

First public screening FICUNAM – Mexico-City, March, 2022

Distribution by Michael Pilz Film
A-1180 Vienna/Austria
Teschnergasse 37
Phone +43.699.11336581