ACHTUNG STUFE
A / 2005, 22 min., Direction: Walter Schaidinger / Post production: Patrick Spanbauer
Supported by the BKA (Federal Chancellery)
„Achtung Stufe“ was originally conceived as a documentary film. However, with the lapse of time from the initial idea to its completion we considered unnecessary to put it under a specific category, since it contains a bit of several of them. In other words, we couldn’t manage to get rid of the documentary completely.
Physically speaking, stairs offer, on the one hand, the possibility to surmount natural distances and vertical obstacles; on the other hand they reveal clear frontiers: where one stair ends, there builds up also an actual end, as far as vertical locomotion is concerned. Virtually speaking, stairs seem to leave frontiers behind more and more, but that cannot work that way. Virtual stairs mean for us stage models, such as the ones described by economy or law hierarchies, and the establishment of an upwards orientation. But you can’t ascend forever, that doesn’t work. We land at M. C. Escher. 
An example at a swimming pool serves to illustrate the fears and feelings caused by staircases. For most of the people who summer after summer have grown up, among other places, at the swimming pool, the diving tower stairs symbolize a striking leap of development. Once these people dare to go up the stairs, don’t they also cease forever to use them to go down? In contrast with it we experience the sovereignty of ski jumpers, who climb on the ramp without hesitating a second. The film is an initial survey, a first contact with this topic. We have learned, at least, how modern companies work from Herrn Braunitzer and his chickens.