31/01/2025 - Austria’s Thomas Fürhapter opens vast fields of thought, immersing his observant and minimalist camera in the different and multiple dimensions and domains of cleaning

"It’s a job for a guy who’s killed his parents". In a classroom, a man is hard at work trying to get rid of a stubborn stain on the floor, and this is one of the rare sentences uttered in Thomas Fürhapter’s Cleaning & Cleansing, a film which enjoyed its French premiere in FIPADOC’s international competition after winning an award for its "original approach" at the Ji.hlava Festival. In fact, this new documentary by the Austrian filmmaker, acclaimed in 2017 for his first feature The Third Option [+see also:
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Intimately washing a female patient (substituted by a wax mannequin on this occasion, which is definitely no coincidence) in hospital, polishing the lights in an operating theatre and cleaning utensils, a hotel room, a classroom, a church, a painting, stairs, corridors, bay windows, sewers, aeroplanes, a zoo, army vehicles and a space shuttle… The domains of cleaning are countless, and the human beings who dedicate themselves to this repetitive, routine, Taylorist ballet are equally abundant, to the point that robots are starting to appear at the helm of vacuum cleaners, promising to replace mankind in future.

As he films these many variations of a world which very often goes unnoticed, demonstrating great meticulousness and patience in the process, Thomas Fürhapter doesn’t impose any kind of viewpoint. Instead, he endeavours to depict cleaning as a transformative process which redefines spaces and materials, a voluntary act to purify disorder in an endless repetitive circle. Moreover, the close attention paid by the filmmaker to the highly prosaic side of this activity (the cleaners dust, fold, wash, scour, pick up cigarette butts from the undergrowth, etc.) ultimately reveals a profound ritualistic dimension to the profession, which he links back to mysticism (water and baptism, the creation of the world, Christian purification of sin) and ethics (a visit to the Holocaust memorial speaks volumes in this respect).

"Disinfection in progress. Please keep a safe distance"… From the microcosm (the inside of the body, objects, buildings, etc.) to the macrocosm (the subway, space), from the material to the immaterial, and from humans to machines, Cleaning & Cleansing weaves a great, diverse tapestry of patterns beneath its austere appearance. By deliberately slowing down the usual pace for capturing reality, Thomas Fürhapter totally detaches viewers from pre-defined patterns of meaning, giving them full freedom for interpretation and reflection. It’s a conceptual approach which might border on boring for some, but it nonetheless demonstrates fascinating philosophical intelligence and reveals a highly subtle, nigh-on imperceptible level of work which goes on beneath the surface of the known world.

Cleaning & Cleansing was produced by Electric Shadows Films.

(Translated from French)