Original Cut Released: 1 Jan 2015, Extended Version Cut: Dec 2017
SCHNEEJUNGEN is an observational short documentary about the friendship of two friends, as they play basketball on a crisp winter's morning. The film, in it's unintentional 'home-video' style shooting, is a brief spontaneous glimpse into the activities of two German teenagers. It was shot in the outskirts of Berlin, on a nearby school basketball court, during a family vacation for Christmas in 2014 near Zehlendorf.
This observational short had almost* no planning and simply entailed the filmmaker tagging along with the subjects who continually exchange banter in a series of candid 'play-argumentative' like scenarios all of which naturally play out in front of the camera. The one part which is 'for camera' so-to-speak is a point of view exchange at the conclusion of their playing in the snow where the camera takes the point of view of the other as we're positioned right in the moment. The film was subtitled by Louis Holder and supervised by native-Berliner Max Kammermeier having studied German at school for a handful of years prior.
An extended edition of Schneejungen is scheduled for release in December 2017, after a personal re-visitational edit took place earlier this year.