Schering Stiftung

A Hunger Artist adapts Kafka’s 1924 short story, an ambiguous allegory about spectacle and spectators; power, narcissism, and resistance. A public showman fasts for years to wide adulation, until his craft goes out of style. He is left to perform for unappreciative spectators and, ultimately, to barely please only himself, unto death. The film highlights the contradictory human experience of our bodies as both 'objects' and 'subjects.'