DESCRIPTION:
"Ermebah" was a mock art film presented at Heidelberg American High's 1980 film festival. Audience members were provided with an artists' manifesto regarding the film experience. The manifesto is reproduced below.

The film was originally presented silently. A soundtrack was added in 2015.



Ermebah: The Experience

It was not an easy year. It required amazing acts of outrageous insanity to stay alive. Many of these acts were shockingly insignificant, and wilted away as fast the rhubarb they were done upon. Others had meaning and relevance behind them, and stand as stark, overpowering testimony of something. Ermebah is such an act.

Yambo Blambo has nothing to do with it. Ermebah is an experience, an overwhelming happening that cannot be soon forgotten. Unlike so many pieces of modern art, Ermebah’s message is not an esoteric one; its point drives home deep in the heart of every viewer, spears his mind, untaps hidden reservoirs of memory, rending his consciousness asunder. He will never by quite the same.

What compelled us to create Ermebah we do not know; we do know that it was something greater than all of us. Some entity, some cosmic-all must have deemed it fit time for us mortals to receive the power of this idea. It is mere coincidence that Ermebah spelled backwards is Habemre? We think not. Can one say that the close phonetic connection between Ermebah and Farmeeple is sheer happenstance? Again, the answer is a resounding “No.” Something possessed us for a short period of our existence, and Ermebah is the result of that possession.

What you are now seeing may or may not be the final version of Ermebah; in fact the film was revised completely just hours prior to this going to press. A long sequence dealing with the struggle between good and evil (personified by Rick Kaempfer and The Wig, respectively), was edited at the last moment and filed away; as it disclosed the basic human definition of Ermebah, we deemed it too revealing and did away with it, opting for a more ethereal interpretation. If, at a later date, we decide to replace it and remove a different sequence, we shall; Ermebah’s message has achieved such a level of universality that any configuration of its numerous shots and sequences would do it no harm; its strength is subliminal, tremendous, and can strike under any circumstances.

Ermebah is here: we, naught but the physical makers of the film, present it to you (quite humbly, of course). Its message of crucial importance for mankind of today can be taken in a million different ways. We ask only that you take it.

The Mortals of Ermebah

Steven Michael Foldvari

Chuck Spera

Andy Dashiell