Helmut Herbst | 366 Weird Movies

Die kathedrale der neuen gefühle

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DIRECTED BY: Helmut Herbst

PLOT: Members of a Seventies Berlin commune travel through space aimlessly in a shipping container clutched in a giant fist, until an amnesiac stowaway divulges information on the location of the commune’s founder.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Even in the world of animated psychedelic European science-fiction—a small niche, admittedly—there aren’t many projects that open with a naked figure trampolining on a small patch of bell peppers as the titles scroll by in the background. That turns out to be practically the baseline of “normal,” in light of what follows.

COMMENTS: Various members of the commune/spaceship frequently repeat the phrase “My eyes are cast down in awe,” and it’s a fitting description of the experience of watching The Cathedral of New Emotions. Expanded from director/co-writer Herbst’s 1971 short, Cathedral follows the antics of a 1970s commune repurposed as soft 1970s sci-fi in the vein of Harlan Ellison or Samuel Delany. It’s like an animated Dark Star with sex and drugs, with a slight element of The Final Programme in the mix. When the spaceship is contained in a fist, hard science is not going to be a primary element, especially when the spacecraft has windshield wipers that sweep off detritus such as bugs and a Hawkman from “Flash Gordon.” The journey through space isn’t just physical. The main space of concern is the metaphysical: one character remarks that “he lives in his head,” and upon his rediscovery of commune founder Madson, a self-described “merchant of images,” he tells another that they are “also just fiction.” There’s a political element, with May ’68 and the Vietnam War referenced both directly and indirectly through the disaffected and somewhat aimless behavior of the “crew.”

Cathedral comes across as a smarter and hornier version of an Adult Swim offering made for stoners with brains. There is a lot of sexual imagery and content, both hetero and homo (a cocooned threeway, a visual pun regarding “blowjob”). If it’s still not clear, the lyrics of the Krautrock-styled theme song at the beginning and end of the film feature the chorus “You’re inside of me/Deep, deep inside of me, ohhh.” In keeping with the Adult Swim comparison, the closest (watered-down) equivalent might be “Superjail!” (although that show features more grotesque cruelty and violence than sex.) Cathedral even has a pair of indeterminately gendered twins who serve roughly the same function as similar “Superjail!” pair, providing a mocking chorus and running commentary on the action. The TV cartoon’s design is also more grotesque than Cathedral‘s, although Herbst includes an element of grotesquerie related to sexual body horror.

Cathedral made its home video premiere courtesy of Deaf Crocodile as a (now sold-out) limited deluxe edition with a booklet including essays from Walter Chaw and Alexander McDonald and slipcover. The standard edition includes a commentary by German film historian Rolf Giesen that is as much a history of German animation as a discussion of this film (description is somewhat pointless because the film is experimental, Giesen says upfront, but he does talk about Cathedral and Herbst in the latter part of the commentary); a visual essay by filmmaker Stephen Broomer; “Container Interstellar,” the 7-minute short that was expanded into Cathedral; a 25-minute documentary examining Herbst’s work (mainly television shorts and an acclaimed documentary on the DADA movement); and an interview with Herbst, who died in 2021.