An elderly blind pool attendant lives in a dilapidated Art Nouveau bathhouse with his son Anton. This latter pretends to his strict father that business is vibrant, while his brother wants to pull down the bath house. Anton finds an ally in the captain’s daughter Eva who needs a valve for her steamboat. Veit Helmer’s award-winning feature debut TUVALU (G 1998) is an almost wordless surreal fairy-tale of great visual brilliance. It has now been digitalized and it is this version that we will show to mark cinema release of Helmer’s most recent film Vom Lokführer, der die Liebe suchte. The director’s other films are available for distribution at the Deutsche Kinemathek and offered to cinemas as part of a small package. (ah) (25.2.)
