Eika Katappa

The title of Werner Schroeter’s first full-length feature can be translated as ‘scattered images’ – a striking description of an associative and imaginative film, an experimental collage of image and sound without any clear coherence – that finally has to be formed in the spectator’s mind. Eika Katappa is a unique forging of elements from opera, theatre and film. Schroeter refers to all kinds of cultural archetypes and effortlessly mixes art and kitsch, facts and myths, high and low culture: for instance, on the soundtrack you can hear both opera diva Maria Callas and the popular vocalist Caterina Valente.
His actors, including the regular Schroeter actress Magdalena Montezuma, purposely make no effort to lip sync to the songs: many opera arias, but also German schlager music. This ecstatic and stylised melodrama received the Josef von Sternberg Prize in 1969 for most original film at the Internationale Filmwoche Mannheim.