Hunter from Elsewhere: A Journey with Helen Britton

A poetic exploration of an excitingly unknown and highly inspiring universe. As we accompany the Australian artist around the globe, Helen Britton's incredible attention to material and detail teaches us that the closer we look at things, the more they have to tell us. A shiny blue bird in a thorny thicket of dark silver, stone drops falling from a metal cloud, a ghost train loaded with mysterious treasure; Australian artist Helen Britton's pieces seem to emerge from some forgotten Wunderkammer. And yet her art is modern, avant-garde jewelry, sculptures and drawings, admired and collected around the world. The film follows her stalking through the German outback, seeking out abandoned workshops, forgotten artisans and manufacturing processes vanishing in time. Visiting the heavy industry sites of her Australian childhood in Newcastle NSW, stone carvers in Idar-Oberstein and glassblowers in Thuringia, we reach her Munich studio, where the artist amalgamates her capture, memories, and precious materials into timeless miniature sculptures. Beyond a simple portrait, the film is a poetic, essayistic approach to a rarely documented creative genre and a subjective narration of a relationship between the protagonist, her work and the filmmaker. Filmed over a four-year period, it is a reflection on art, memories and storytelling, with insightful interviews with the artists friends and colleagues. The Soundtrack includes indie electronic pieces by German cult bands like The Notwist, Driftmachine, Radio Citizen, Sasebo and Mount Hush. Quote from the Film: "While the components themselves are in the form of the cheapest trinket, the sentiment that they intend to convey reaches into the deepest abyss" - Helen Britton Director's Note: I met Helen Britton about twenty years ago, at Munich's Academy of Fine Arts, where she was a guest student in Otto Künzli's goldsmith class. I was sitting on the jury for the competition "Film and Jewelry". We screened a film, and the students had 48 hours to interpret it as jewelry. I clearly recall Helen's object: She had sawed a hollow brooch from the handle of a toothbrush "rendering the essence of the film's love story. The colored fragment shifting back and forth within the handle elicited in me a sensation of pain. I thought: how can a simple object rise such feelings? Now I made a film inverting this experience" from the object to the moving image. Over the years, I have followed Helen's development in Munich, the worldwide center of contemporary avant-garde jewelry. In my encounters with many other jewelry artists, I have reflected on what makes jewelry so existential - beyond its material value. What imbues a ring with significance? What lends one's grandfather's chain, one's mother's earrings their meaning? What motivates international jewelry collectors on their hunt around the globe? Jewelry comes alive only when it is worn "when it becomes a talisman, a messenger from another world. Jewelry speaks a universal language" in every culture, in every family, for each human being. It involves rituals, the body, space. Jewelry "developed parallel to spoken languages" speaks of love, respect, and is above all: communication.