Le Congrès S Amuse

Down the gangway, photographers leave the deck of a riverboat in large numbers.

August 1661. Henriette de Coligny, Comtesse de la Suze, solicits from the ecclesiastical justice the holding of a Congress.

Photographs are dusted, records cleaned, insects removed from books and everything is digitized for eternity. The matter-of-fact shots of fastidious archival work, though, are combined with the voice of a young woman who reports on the collapse of civilization, the fragile artefacts of which she secures as the last human being left in the “Congress”. In the field of tension between image and sound a space for our imagination opens up.

The Baroness de Courtebise presides over an association of mothers-in-law with grievances against their sons-in-law. Armed with her prerogatives, she forbids the marriage of her daughter-in-law to the mayor's nephew, especially as an inheritance is in doubt. The ladies kidnap, the men kidnap, the election campaign turns sour and the Baroness must capitulate. She takes revenge by falling into the mayor's arms.

This 1943 documentary film reports on the technical progress of the cinematographic shooting, in particular the development of the slow motion in the scientific films.

Vienna 1965. While visiting the Wax Museum a group of tourists stop in front of the figure of Prince Metternich. All of a sudden they find themselves brought back 150 years earlier during the Vienna Congress of 1814-1815. Before their eyes wide open, history is in the making. Gathered around the Tsar of Russia, Alexander I, the Kings of Bavaria, Würtemberg, Prussia and Denmark, are persuaded they are building the future Europe whereas they are being manipulated by foxy Chancellor Metternich, he himself under the thumb of cynical Count Talleyrand, the French representative. All those considerations come second though to partying and social life, which is all these aristocrats really want out of this congress.

In 2018, a young bartender in the Bronx, a coal miner’s daughter in West Virginia, a grieving mother in Nevada and a registered nurse in Missouri join a movement of insurgent candidates challenging powerful incumbents in Congress. Without political experience or corporate money, these four women are attempting to do what many consider impossible.

Vienna glove-sales-lady Christel falls in love with Russian Czar Alexander. Austrian Prince Metternich tries to use this and other pleasant diversions to keep him out of the negotiation conferences of the 1815 Vienna Congress.

An aging, out-of-work actress accepts one last job, though the consequences of her decision affect her in ways she didn't consider.