Untitled
(Lost Horizon)

2015, CN/AT, HD video, colour, silent, 7 min, English titles

Screenings
Staging Mimicry, depo, Istanbul, TR, 2018
Staging Mimicry, Chronus Art Centre, Shanghai, CN, 2017

Exhibitions
Fieldwork/Homework, MUSA Museum auf Abruf, Vienna, AT, 2015
Fieldwork/Homework, Galerie 5020, Salzburg, AT, 2015

Untitled (Lost Horizon) is an experimental documentary that juxtaposes two utopian visions from different contexts. On the visual level, the film explores ‘National Culture Village’, a village which postulates the harmonious coexistence and mutual recognition between all Chinese ethnic groups. This open-air museum was built to display the architecture, clothes and everyday objects of various ethnic minorities living in China but is currently abandoned.

The images taken in the National Culture Village are overlaid with a narration inspired by Frank Capra's film Lost Horizon. This US American fantasy film depicts the imaginary place Shangri-La, in the mountains of Tibet, where neither war nor age exist. In Untitled, Pöschl pits these two narratives against each other in order to slowly bring to light both the magic and the menace that are often inherent in utopian ideas.