Heimkino sieben

Another documentary I probably wouldn't have chosen to see if I had been limited by tickets and time.  Also quite interesting, though, it's about an art workshop for intellectually disabled people.  Some of them have even become quite well-known as outsider artists, bringing more attention and, one hopes, funding to the center and its mission.  Kunst kommt aus dem Schnabel wie er gewachsen ist shows several of the beneficiaries of the program working on their projects, on one hand for their personal therapy, but also with an eye to sales.  At one point the head of the center tells some visitors that, while the art is more helpful than the repetitive work of assembling ballpoint pens, it's the factory style work that ends up paying the bills.  You never know what kind of art is going to sell the best.  Two of the participants are preparing shows and pieces to lend out during the filming.  One is a woman who often paints copies of classical works with rooster heads instead of human ones, although she also makes models of famous buildings and creates other, more personal works.  Another is an elderly man whose past is mostly a mystery, since records are not very detailed he doesn't like to speak very much.  He creates highly abstract drawings of precise and repetitive lines that so often go off the paper he's using that his easel and table are also sometimes displayed as parts of his work.  Their names are Suzy van Zehlendorf and Adolf Beutler, if you're curious.  The patients seem to enjoy creating pictures as part of their therapies, and fit in a regular schedule of activities.  Some of them get nervous when their patterns are changed, even though they're preparing for an important art show.  The show appears to be successful, with an appreciative public, and the catalog impresses the patients, who are delighted to see their works in a shiny, important looking book.

As luck would have it, I get a kölsch to go with today's film.  It's not what I would have chosen if it were up to me, I would have thought something heavier would go better.  This time, though, the Früh Kölsch has more weight to it than I remember.  It's also a deeper bitter and more typically beery, not as light and effervescent.  Still, very much a summer beer, it's just too bad I'm not at a street table just off of Gran Vía after seeing the documentary in Palacio de la Prensa.  Surely, there would be someplace with German beers down there.  No Casa de la Cerveza, Kloster, or Oldenburg, but something would do.