The Filmballad of Mamadada

‘The German-born baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was a wandering troublemaker: feminist, Dadaist, lesbian, proto-punk and provocateur in 1910s and 1920s Berlin and New York. A scandalmonger and maximalist she realised the old ideal of dissolving the boundaries between art and life every single day. Elsa now returns in a cinematic phantom portrait made by over 50 young artists, who entirely in her spirit have contributed a fragment to the total picture along the lines of the surrealistic ‘exquisite corpse’ model. The Filmballad of Mamadada is something as rare as a work that renews the scandalous ideals of the avant-garde without the slightest trace of retro nostalgia.