Hunter from Elsewhere. A Journey with Helen Britton at Munich Schmuck Fair 2025

Hunter from Elsewhere - a Journey with Helen Britton (97 min, color, English and German with English subtitles)

A shiny blue bird in a thicket of thorns of dark silver, stone drops from a cloud of metal, a ghost train loaded with mysterious treasures. The pieces of jewellery by Australian artist Helen Britton seem to emerge from the wonder chambers of the past and are still modern avant-garde jewelry that is admired and collected worldwide.

Growing up in Newcastle, New South Wales, a stronghold of heavy industry, the Australian moved to Munich in the 1990s. She studies with Otto Künzli in the jewelry class of the Academy of Fine Arts and discovers the "exotic" world of ancient craft traditions. The film accompanies them in search of noble and everyday materials and almost forgotten craft techniques, shows their encounters with the last bearers of a perishing knowledge and leads the viewer from Idar-Oberstein, the former center of the gemstone trade, via the glassblowers in Lauscha, Thuringia to the heavy industrial city of Newcastle in New South Wales/Australia and Bangkok. The film tells not only about the process of creation, but also about the fascination and attraction that jewelry has always exerted on us humans. "What we hold in our hands are memories".

For four years, the filmmaker Elena Alvarez Lutz accompanied the artist. The result is a poetic search for traces, far beyond a portrait - a film about telling stories: one's own and those of others.


Press reviews:
"An amazing film, (...) which in its slightly melancholic basic mood irretrievably negotiates the past and yet is completely in the here and now." Julie Metzdorf, Bavarian Broadcasting

"Helen Britton could be one of Agnès Varda's collectors from "Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse", one who values leftover or discarded objects and turns them into the proverbial gold." Dunja Bialas, Artechock


Where and When:
March 12th 15:00 pm at Theatiner Filmkunst: Theatinerstraße 32, 80333 München.