In early 1930 author and journalist Heinrich Hauser embarked on a 110-day voyage from Hamburg to South America on the F. Laeisz shipping company’s four-masted sailship Pamir. He describes the voyage in his book “Die letzten Segelschiffe” and in the documentary film“Windjammer und Janmaaten”. Described by the Berlin Börsen-Courier as “a cinematic elegy and a precise report, as sober as it is tender”, this film goes beyond documentary reporting. Hauser does not tell us anything about the Pamir, the port it is headed for or the cargo it is carrying. Instead, he documents in detail the everyday life of the sailors, their harsh working conditions, their repetitive tasks, their moments of leisure and the little things that brighten their day. But Hauser does not make heroes of them, even when the ship is caught in a heavy storm. The real hero of his film is the Pamir herself, with her dark masts and bright sails. Hauser’s studies of the sails are the leitmotif of a symphony that is in itself a variation on the theme of the existential experience of sailing a ship. Life on board appears as a strange encapsulated state outside the bounds of time, a constant present. (Jeanpaul Goergen)