KOW

Hurd’s Bank (2019) was commissioned by the art space Blitz Valetta in Malta. The 14-minute film deals with the smuggling of oil on the Maltese coast, the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and the question of what we can discover about these events. Tobias Zielony went to the far borders of the EU and used a telescope to film movements of ships at Hurd’s Bank, miles away, where tankers from Libya and other ports trade crude oil in international waters, and sell it in questionable ways. He observes a space beyond legality, looking for explanations for the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the intertwining of the Mafia with politics, the oil trade, corruption and international law. While the images capture the distant sea in front of the island, Malta expands into a space that evades law, creates its own rights, kills people, and at the same time stays untouched.

Die Untoten (The Undead, 2020) was produced by Tobias Zielony for the public art project Gegenwarten in Chemnitz. In the style of a short B-movie, Zielony stages a violent showdown between two disgustingly dull zombies and two noble martial arts heroes dressed in slim blue onesies who finally break the neck of their opponents. The location carries a serious history. The National Socialist Underground (NSU) - a right wing terror group - lived in Chemnitz for some time and built up a dense network of supporters. Racism and right-wing violence are not over with the end of the NSU. The revenants and undead of right-wing extremist terror encounter a resistance in Zielony‘s film, which stands up to the zombies in spectacular and acrobatic battle scenes. It‘s as comic-like as it is saturated with reality, but the satisfaction about the victory of good over evil only lasts as long as the film starts all over in a loop.