Austria

  • Ulrich Seidl – Bilder einer Ausstellung (1996)

    1991-2000AustriaDocumentaryUlrich Seidl

    Quote:
    Seidl takes his camera to an abstract-art exhibition and asks the public to comment on what they see. Some analyse the work from a strictly Freudian angle as they nibble their canapés; others can only see penises. In reality, the paintings are simply an excuse for Seidl to unmask the anguishes, fears, suspicions and sexual taboos of gathered together there.Read More »

  • Ulrich Seidl – Spass ohne Grenzen AKA Fun without Limits (1998)

    1991-2000AustriaDocumentaryUlrich Seidl

    Quote:
    Whether in the countryside or on the edge of the city, amusement parks or fun fairs are hot across Europe. Their names, amusement parks and fun fairs, say it all: People want to be amused, they want to have fun. For example, at the Europark in southern Germany a dummy with a contorted face sits in an electric chair. Smoke comes out of him and a light flickers off and on from out of the roasted “brain” of the dummy, which shudders and cries in pain. A film on the culture of amusement in today’s “leisure” society.Read More »

  • Ulrich Seidl – Die letzten Männer AKA The Last Real Men [Uncut Version] (1994)

    1991-2000AustriaDocumentaryUlrich Seidl

    Quote:
    The Last Real Men (Die letzten Männer) is an hour-long piece following the Viennese teacher Karl S. on his search for a wife who doesn’t question traditional gender roles and “doesn’t talk back”. In so doing, Seidl probes the motives that make Austrian men look for wives in Thailand and the Philippines.Read More »

  • Ulrich Seidl – Der Busenfreund AKA The Bosom Friend (1997)

    1991-2000AustriaDocumentaryUlrich Seidl

    A 1997 TV film. Two descriptions:

    “Main character of this movie is Rene Rupnik, a former math teacher. He is forty years old and lives together with his mother in a desolate block of flats. Ever since his early youth women with big breasts have fascinated him, because they symbolise a kind of earth mother to him. He has never had an especially close relationship with his own mother; she was too ‘bony’ for him. Object of Rene’s fantasy is the actress Senta Berger, to him everything a woman should be. Standing by the blackboard and explaining the mathematical laws of sine and cosine (‘sinus’ is bosom in Latin), Rene sings the praises of the female curves and those of Santa Berger in particular. Filmmaker Ulrich Seidl let the former teacher speak freely about his obsessions and desires, intercutting his monologues with scenes from the protagonist’s day-to-day life.”Read More »

  • Michael Haneke – La pianiste AKA The Piano Teacher (2001) (HD)

    2001-2010ArthouseAustriaDramaMichael Haneke

    Quote:
    Erika Kohut is a piano teacher at the Vienna Conservatory prestigious music school in Vienna. In her early forties and single, she lives with her overprotective and controlling mother in a hermetically sealed world of love-hate and dependency, where there is no room for men. Her sex life consists of voyeurism and masochistic self-injury. Lonely and alienated, Erika finds solace by visiting sex shops and experimenting with masochism. Ata a recital, she befriends Walter, a handsome young man, whom she seduces and with whom she begins an illicit affair. As Erika slowly drifts closer to the brink of emotional disorder, she uses the love-stricken Walter to explore her darkest sado-masochistic fantasies, which eventually lead to her undoing.Read More »

  • Michael Haneke – Der siebente Kontinent AKA The Seventh Continent (1989) (HD)

    1971-1980ArthouseAustriaDramaMichael Haneke

    Quote:
    Three members of a middle-class family are followed as their lifestyle slowly disintegrates. Nothing spectacular happens: it’s just the dreary un-ending grind of a go-nowhere existence. The film’s final scene emulates Fassbinder, as the threesome bid auf wiedersehn to everyone and everything in a gaudy, grotesque manner. It goes without saying that Der 7. Kontinent is not for everyone’s taste.Read More »

  • Nikolaus Geyrhalter – 7915 Km (2008)

    2001-2010AustriaDocumentaryNikolaus Geyrhalter

    Synopsis
    A motor-sports spectacle that kicks up plenty of dust. On the trail of the 2007 Dakar Rallye ‘7915 KM’ undertakes a search, along the way encountering the variety to be found in Africa’s present in Morocco, Sahrawi Republic, Mauritania, Mali and Senegal. ‘7915 KM’ demonstrates the extent of this distance, which is the result of political and economic conditions, and also the ideas and prejudices to be found in both Europe and Africa. It also makes the closeness tangible, which becomes clear in the stories of everyday life, work, hopes and worries. Keeping the sobering reality in mind, it creates an homage to humanity and slowness which questions deep-seated perceptions and the role of Europeans in numerous, presumably African, problemsRead More »

  • Peter Tscherkassky – The Exquisite Corpus (2015)

    2011-2020AustriaExperimentalPeter TscherkasskyShort Film

    Synopsis:
    The Exquisite Corpus is based on various erotic films and advertising rushes. I play on the “cadavre exquis” technique used by the Surrealists, drawing disparate body parts constellating magical creatures. Myriad fragments are melted into a single sensuous, humorous, gruesome, and ecstatic dream.Read More »

  • Nikolaus Geyrhalter – Elsewhere (2001)

    2001-2010AustriaDocumentaryEthnographic CinemaNikolaus Geyrhalter

    In 2000, the final year of the twentieth century, Nikolaus Geyrhalter and his crew set out with a video camera to film twelve, self-contained ethnographic episodes, each encapsulating a month-long document of the lives of people who perform their quotidian rituals in a figurative Elsewhere, as follow:Read More »

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