Rustlers marks 150th birthday of the hamburger with 72-minute German arthouse biopic
To celebrate the 150th year of the hamburger, Rustlers, home of the microwaveable hamburger, has released a feature-length German arthouse film entitled 'The Seas Between Us'.
Rustlers marks 150th birthday with German arthouse 72-minute biopic
Created by Droga5 London, the film tells the history of the burger, right back to its speculated and contested origins. While many theories exist, the film follows the tale of Otto Kuase - a German cook who one day decided to fry some hamburger steak in butter, top it with an egg and toss it in a bun. The legends claims German sailors brought the idea along with them to the United States.
In an interesting twist of direction, the role of the celebrated hamburger is played by Paul Faßnacht - a German immigrant who wears a burger bun hat and collar.
As he lives on his deathbed, the personified burger recants his life to a documentary maker, covering all the difficulties he had to overcome during his life.
The personalised hamburger tells the documentary maker that he was born after his father (Kuase) decided to ‘liberate’ the German people from the ‘bourgeois tools’ of cutlery by encasing a hamburger steak with buns.
He tells the documentary maker of how he set sail from Germany to come to the US to seek his fortune, his rivalry with the hot dog in the US and his issues dealing with the number of people claiming to be his father.
The hamburger is joined by his adult son who also wears the burger bun hat and collar, who shares his trauma of growing up with an absent father. After lamenting his childhood, the pair find some accord before his son declares he is the next generation burger - microwaveable and ready in only 90 seconds.
Using the last of his breath, his father tells him - “Make them love you like they loved me.”
Discussing the campaign, Dan Morris at Droga5 London, said: “The process of creating from scratch a legitimate piece of arthouse cinema was daunting enough. Then we realised, to be true to the idea of the hamburger being created in Germany, the film also had to be in German. Which none of us spoke. Some might say that it was an insane thing to undertake. Those people have obviously never worked on Rustlers."
