Milltown, Montana

Director's Note:

„As a child of the Ruhr area and citizen of MÜLHEIM in Germany, there is this one question on my mind: What will come after the age of industrialization, how will life continue and what will happen to the acceleration once triggered off by technological processes? Will there be a rapprochement with the rhythm of nature? Can technology and science be combined with a life with nature? How do the descendants of the so-called „primitive people“ live, what do they understand under „progress“, what do they think of „acceleration“?

My films have dealt with motion and movements in countryside locations for 10 years now. There are no hierarchies between objects, people and places, they are all treated equally and examined for their rhythm and gestures. In this sense, the films have no protagonists; there are merely relations and meetings, arranged ones and spontaneous ones.”

Mentor's Note:

Rainer Komers is a particular filmmaker who tells stories about particular places in a particular way. He lets you experience the rythm of the places and feel the specific flow of the time there. He does not tell you what to think, on the contrary - he lets you participate in the creation of the film. His language is not German, English or Russian, his language is cinema. That is one of the reasons I am very happy to be able to assist him in making his new film.

(Miroslav Janek/ Czech Republic, Filmmaker)

Production Notes:

Author / Director	Rainer Komers
Producer	Stefan Kloos / Kloos & Co. Medien GmbH, Rainer Komers
Camera	Rainer Komers
Sound recordist	Michel Klöfkorn
Editor	Bert Schmidt, Frankfurt/Main
Sound design	Bert Schmidt
Composer	---
Line producer	Caroline Kirberg
Running time	33:52
Shooting format	16 mm
Screening format	35 mm
Sound format	Dolby Digital 5.1

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Short Synopsis:

Meticulously composed images, impressive collages of sound, no dialogue: „Milltown, Montana“ is an elegiac excursion across a magnificent landscape deeply scarred by man. Applying the same majestic imagery as in his prize-winning films, „Kobe“ and „Nome Road System“, Rainer Komers documents what was once the largest mining region in the United States, now contaminated by toxic substances and heavy metals, and seemingly trapped in a post- industrial phase of standstill.

Long Synopsis:

Milltown, in German „Mülheim“, a place in Western Montana at the confluence of Blackfoot and Clark Fork River. A place, where timber was processed, initially with water power and then, after the Milltown Dam had been erected, with electric energy. The Clark Fork River comes from Butte, 120 miles south-east of Milltown, once the largest mining city in the US.

The dam and the hydropower plant have recently been pulled down, the timber millhas been shut down. In summer, the canoeists add some colour to the industrial wasteland, but anglers won’t show up here. Toxic substances and heavy metals, carried by the river from the mines at Butte and from the copper mill at Anaconda to the former water reservoir, have contaminated the ground. In a move to renaturalise the landscape, the contaminated sludge, an estimated 14 million truck loads, is now to be removed and shipped upstream to a place called Opportunity, which the mining corporation of Anaconda had had erected once as a model village in the green fields next to the copper mill. The Clark Fork River is the largest „Superfund Site“, the biggest renaturalisation project of the United States.

The area in Montana that is covered by the film has the shape of a lying cross (+-), with its longitudinal axis in west-easterly direction being formed by the Interstate 90 from Butte via Milltown to Missoula, a garden and University City. The south/northern axis is formed by Highway 93, running from Idaho through the Bitterroot Valley and the Flathead Indian Reservation to the Canadian border and the Glacier National Park. The tracks of the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Company that cross at the Missoula freight station run parallel to the trunk roads. While cattle are bred on the pastures in the Bitterroot Valley, they breed buffalos and horses in the Flathead Reservation. There is land speculation in both places. Life in „Big Sky“ Montana is still comparatively tranquil and offers sufficient ‚nature’. This is why more and people from the big cities come here and settle near the Clark Fork River, the Bitterroot River or the Flathead Lake. Californian developers invest in villas, residential estates and golf courses. 85 % of the land in the Flathead Reservation is now owned by whites. Although the tribes still owe the water rights in the hot springs of the same name, the bathing resort of the Red Indians, once a holy place to them, where the Montana jet set used to meet until the 1970s, has fallen in disrepair and is derelict. Montana’s social structure, shaped by miners, ranchers, small town citizens and marginalized Red Indians, is changing rapidly.

Rainer Komers:

born in 1944 in Guben. Collaborations in the Students film society Bonn,; co-programmer. Study of film at Kunstakademie Düseldorf, masterclass and study of photography at Essen University. Films and cinematography in Alaska, Ecuador, France, India, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Yemen. His films are broadcasted by 3SAT/Mainz, ARTE/Strassbourg, HR/Frankfurt, NDR/Hamburg, PBS/Montana, WDR/Köln, ZDF/Mainz. He gives film lectures in Berlin, Dusseldorf, Munster and Vienna. He lives and works in Berlin and Muelheim an der Ruhr, Germany.

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Bert Schmidt:

Born 1950 in Ruesselsheim/ Germany. After Secondary School started with Filmstudies in Paris in 1970. Since 1973 - Practical Work at the french TV-Channel ORTF (editing and directing). He also studied sociology der
Soziologie in Frankfurt/ Main, focus on mediasociology. He is executive producer and editor of several documentary films.

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