Austria 2015, b/w and color, approx. 90 min. Featuring: Gottfried Breitfuß, Sabina Holzer, Annette Holzmann, Jack Hauser, Monika Manz as well as the physicists and engineers Salman Tewari, Claus Turtur, Wilhelm Mohorn and many elderly residents of Aurolsmünster. Directed by: Angela Summereder, produced by: Othmar Schmiderer, cinematography by: Frank Amann, camera assistant: Markus Otto, lighting by: Markus Thiermeyer, sound by: Peter Rösner, production manager: Peter Janecek (cinema, ORF)
Viennale 2015, Diagonale Graz 2016, theatrical release 11th of March 2016
What took place within the walls of the castle in the small town of Aurolsmünster in Innkreis (Austria) in the 1920s? Karl Schappeller, with the financial support of the Catholic Church, the German imperial family and the English Royal Navy, claimed to be working on a revolutionary form of energy: raumkraft, or spatial force. For the 90 year-olds still living in the town who were children at the time, there remains an air of mystery surrounding town’s castle, which was once in the headlines and drove many a man to ruin. Was Schappeller a con man and a fraud, a “spiritist”, or was he a visionary? Along with the surviving witnesses, the film takes us on a tour of discovery into the old building: In discussions and in somnambulant memory sequences, speculations are developed about what transpired. Furthermore, director Angela Summereder consults engineers and physicists who today are convinced that their work on zero-point energy or vacuum energy corresponds to the environmentally friendly raumenergie that Schappeller was researching at the time. All charlatanism? Or how much hubris is necessary to discover something truly new?
“Navigating between science and fiction. Mystical and exciting.” Sebastian Höglinger and Peter Schernhuber (Diagonale 2016)
“Out of the Void is far from being a science-documentation. It manoeuvres freely, with a lot of humour. A documentary about human imagination, the adventure of thinking, visions and audacity.” Claus Philipp (Kino-Zeitung/ Cinema-Press Vienna)