Josef Hauser – clockmaker and farmer in a Tyrolean village – worked for more than 20 years to achieve his vision of constructing a sound machine, composed of modified clockwork mechanisms, which produces celestial bell sounds, as well as a wooden model of a Gothic tower, the architectural equivalent of its sound pattern.

The film is a journey into the inner and outer world of an obsession: subjective images of travelling to Gothic cathedrals, everyday work in the field and forest, the silence and homeliness of long nights in the clockmaker’s workshop. The highlight of the film is the moment when, after years of work, Josef Hauser starts up his Gesamtkunstwerk and abducts the viewer to the realm of sound and space.

Synthetic documentary film, Austria 1988
16 mm, black-and-white, 55 mins.
Idea: Othmar Schmiderer
Concept, camera, sound, editing: Othmar Schmiderer/Heinz Ebner
Décor: Mario Bräuer
Music: Heinz Leonhardsberger
Production: Schmiderer/Ebner

Festivals
1988: Austrian Film Festival Wels, Nyon Documentary Film Festival, Amsterdam Documentary Film Festival

1989: Paris (Cinéma du Réel), Viennale Wien, Leipzig Documentary Film Festival, Figueira da Foz, Hamburg (No Budget), Bombay

TV-Broadcasts
1988: ORF, Kunststücke; 1989 SWF