Who was Samuel Rosenstock and what did he want?
Tristan Tzara is famous all over the world as the DADA co-founder and promoter. The most common reaction of people today when pronouncing his name is a smile and telling me: Of course I know about Tristan Tzara. But when I ask them what do they know, they all tell me, more or less, the same thing: He was a Dadaist president, some say a bit of a clown little man in need for attention. My researches found a much deeper person, a controversial human being in constant search for individual freedom of creation, in constant contradiction with everybody and himself at the same time. He claimed all his life that contradiction is the only way to evolution! Let’s find out what made him!
by Picabia 
What’s the structure of the film?
A road documentary movie following the stops that Tzara made in his becoming: Moinești, București, Zurich, Paris. Every stop will bring interviews with artists, curators, journalists, writers, art historians, family, friends and never the less ordinary people – completing an image of Tristan Tzara. It will be no voice over leading the film, all will be edited based on the images and the interviews. The final editing of the film will bring together the opinion of people today on him, old rare footage of Tristan Tzara, real facts of his life and our journey in 2016 following his life events.
What’s the financial support for?
- equipment rental: camera, lenses, grips, sound recorders, lights, hard disks
- production: extra crew for camera, sound;travel, research, covering rights for footage
- post production: sorting material, syncing, editing, sound mastering, colour correction, animation, graphics and titles, music rights
- distribution: film copies for film festivals, DVD previews, TV previews, web platform developers
Who’s in the film already?
- Juri Steiner, Managing Director and Curator of the DADA Universal exhibition
- Adrian Notz, the director of Cabaret Voltaire and initiator of the project Obsession Dada
- Anita Hugi (Sternstunde Kunst) and David Dufresne (creator of webdoc «Prison Valley») – initiators and creators of the project Dada-Data
- Catherine Hug, co-curator of the Dadaglobe Reconstructed at Kunsthaus Zurich
- The list is open to many more from Vasile Robciuc in Moinești to Peter K Wehrli who met Janco in person in Zurich and filmed with Arp in 1965, hopefully Christophe Tzara, Tristan’s and Greta Knutson’s son, in Paris, and many more surprising figures.
Why you should back this project?
- Because there is so many intrigued things to find out about this mysterious man
- Because he was one of the most controversial avant-garde artists of his time and in top 12 most influent in the world
- Because he still is an inspiration to modern days poets and artists
- Because he had an unbelievable force to promote DADA and make it a movement across the globe acting like a social network nowadays
- Because there was never finished a documentary on «the approximate man» Tristan Tzara alone but always part of a group or movement