art house?

I was trying to dig the tunnel. Not because I needed it yet, but at the end of this academic year my language course ends and there isn't an obvious follow-up. Some people do the same course again, but I'm looking for something related but different.

Stammtisch, I thought. Perhaps there's a regular pub meeting in the area where we can converse?

And yes, there is, although when I made contact, the main organiser was swamped with other things. Would I like to organise the next meeting?

Chuckle. In sich hinein kichern. Gern.

Gladly.

That's how a group of us found ourselves in the bar at the Phoenix local arts hub, having a drink und lebhaftes Gespräch before going to see a Film.

By some strange luck I'd plucked an evening for the meetup which co-incided with the venue showing a modern German language film, with English subtitles.

First, in the bar, our group arrived and chattered away. I started learning new words as we veered around topics.

And then to Studio 74, with its excellent sound system and nice bright screen, watching "Western", an F-rated movie directed by Valeska Grisebach, her third movie and this one set in modern-day Bulgaria.

It's a culture-clash drama in which she features many of the trappings of a conventional western: a stranger comes to town. A white horse. A fight in a saloon.

Intermingle 'a Germans in Bulgaria' theme and there's room for a slow burn narrative to explore and probe the people on this edge. Formally, the story is of a group of German workers who start a tough job at a remote construction site on the Bulgarian border. Oblivious to sentiment, they fly a German flag over their encampment.

The foreign land awakens these men's sense of adventure, but they are confronted with their own prejudice and mistrust.

Grisebach’s thinking deconstructs the western and reassembles it anew, updated for the twenty-first century world of migratory labour and economic fragility.

Oh yes, and parts of it were spoken in Bulgarian, emphasising the difficulty of communication between the 'two tribes'.

I think our whole group enjoyed the movie, which was strikingly different from anything on show at the local Vue cinema.

Some of us gathered again afterwards for a follow-up in the bar. I mused that I could give better street directions than I could film reviews 'auf Deutsch'.