A cowboy roams about between 'the forgotten east' and the 'never found west'. This video is about the last cowboy and his journey in 1989 shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He is a young men and grew up with the socialist heroes who toppled ingloriously with the Wall. Earlier, in the '60s and '70s numerous cowboy and Indian films were made here. The Indians were heroes fighting against white settlement of the west. But with eyes looking westward former East Germany is soon forgotten, and with Yugoslavia also falling apart our cowboy goes to the land of unbounded opportunity in search of the dreams that that the west represents. America however appears to be lost in its illusions, advertising and reality. The journey of this last cowboy is projected onto a screen and as he looks at the world around him he switches back and forth between his thoughts, associations and memories. This colours his view, but it also means that every time he tells his story it changes and becomes entwined in another way with his fantasies and renditions. Now that the world of this cowboy is on DVD these other aspects of his story can be unlocked, both for and by his listeners. The linear narrative perspective is here maintained only in the sound; it is combined with a nonlinear visual narrative. We are able to zap between different visual approaches which brings it close to our subjective, everyday experience of and contact with stories and histories. With enough time and patience we come to know the 'soul' of a cowboy whose own advice is: “Never talk to strangers.”
– Carla Hoekendijk
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Sound: Raimund von Schneibner, Music: Dietmar Haupt
Petra Epperlein ° 1966, Karl Marx Stadt (Germany)
Michael Tucker ° 1966, Honolulu (Hawaï)
Live and work in Potsdam (Brd)
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