Heather and Zeuss (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) - Limited Edition of 10 Photograph

Heather and Zeuss (The Girl behind the White Picket Fence) 2013, 20x24cm, Edition 10/10, digital C-Print print, based on a Polaroid. Certificate and Signature label. Artist Inventory # 13137.17. Not mounted, featuring Heather Megan Christie Stefanie Schneider By Caroline Ryder Travel up a bumpy dirt road in 29 Palms, California, the trail strewn with rocks, and you’ll come upon a gigantic 1950s trailer in pristine condition, ringed by a white picket fence, with cottontail rabbits hopping among neat little rose bushes that bloom in spite of the broiling desert heat. 

Inside the trailer are period accents—a vintage radio, vintage fridge, little crocheted doilies and dusty gilt-framed photographs. It’s a surreal home-sweet-home, an Americana fantasy as imagined by German artist and experimental filmmaker Stefanie Schneider whose work is so inspired by the desert landscape, she made it her home in 2005. “There’s a completely different light here than in Germany, a beautiful light,” says Schneider, whose 10 acre property is dotted with vintage trailers. They surround her mid century home, and serve as sets for her photo shoots or as guest lodgings for her friends from Hollywood and Berlin. “But what I really love about the desert is the desolation,” she continues. “The sense of hope for something that might or might not come. It’s easy to see our dreams projected in the desert.” Famed for shooting trailer park chic fine art photographs exclusively on vintage Polaroid film, Schneider recently completed her most ambitious project to date—a feature film made entirely of Polaroid stills (4000 images in total), the story set around her magnificent 1950s trailer. The film, called “The Girl Behind The White Picket Fence” tells the story of a broken-hearted girl who lives in the trailer named Heather, and played by Heather Megan Christie, Heather stars opposite Kyle Larson (who plays ‘Hank’), a real-life gypsy fisherman who catches crab in Alaska when he’s not surfing in Southern California. Never in the history of movie making has a director shot a film entirely on Polaroid film. “There was great difficulty shooting a film this way,” says Schneider, who, with her long straight hair, wide innocent eyes and thick-framed glasses, conjures an art-house Gretel. “If I had used a regular camera I would have had 36 exposures per minute, much faster and easier than using the old Polaroid camera which takes a long time to shoot one frame. Also, sometimes it doesn’t shoot at the exact moment you think it’s going to—but that’s really great because then you miss the perfect moment…and often those are the best shots.” Individually, the Polaroid photographs that comprise the project 29 PALMS, CA stand alone, but together and in sequence, filmed with super 8 and 16mm film stock and overlaid with poetic voice-over monologues, they create a dynamic kaleidoscope of words and pictures, a dreamy tale that channels Terrence Malick. Gus Van Sant, and pages torn from a lonely girl’s journal. The idea to shoot a movie in this way came about in 2004, when Schneider was working with leading German director Mark Forster (Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland, Quantum of Solace) on his film Stay. She had met Forster at director Wim Wender’s birthday party in Hollywood. A few years later, Forster asked Schneider to shoot Polaroids of scenes from Stay as he filmed; he used those photographs for dream and memory sequences in the movie. For the first time, Schneider saw her Polaroids strung together in sequence, moving with rhythm like a flipbook, in the context of a story. When Forster urged her to consider making a feature film using that technique, the seed of 29 PALMS, CA was sown. She mentioned the idea to her good friend German actor Udo Kier, who also gave the idea a big thumbs up, and agreed to play the part of a mysterious shaman in the film. Getting talented people on board was the easy part (for a while, Charlotte Gainsbourg was pegged to play the starring role, although she pulled out two weeks before shooting commenced because she was pregnant and couldn't travel to the desert. Filming took place in Spring 2011 and 2012. Schneider will submit the film to the Slamdance film festival 2018 and it was broadcast in 2013 by leading German television channel, Arte. For more information visit Stefanie's 29 Palms, CA project. Film features original soundtrack with songs by Adam Weiss, Daisy McCrackin, Billy Harvey, Sophie Huber, Zoe Bicat, Max Sharam, Cheyenne Randall, Producer Caroline Haertel & Mirjana Momirovic, Produced by micafilm In coproduction with arte, Funded by Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg.