The Record ("a refined mixture of black comedy and intellectual satire"-Ron Holloway, Variety) follows the degeneration of an amateur "couch potato" into a professional one, and ultimately into a human television receiver. Rico and Banana (Uwe Ochsenknecht and Laszlo I. Kisch) are two techies in the business of video piracy (they have perfected a scanner which enables them to copy a film directly from the projector onto video via telephone). Inevitably, they are busted, but their search begins immediately for funds to finance an illegal transmitter at sea. Rico goes out for the first world record in non-stop television viewing, sponsored with big bucks by a television manufacturer. His goal is 240 hours-ten days-but well before the clock has struck 100, his life has become a Kafkaesque nightmare in which reality and tele-fiction merge. The Record is shot in pleasing, cinematic black-and-white. Daniel Helfer's first feature, it was selected for critics' week at the Venice Film Festival '85.