CoMo No. 25: Austria (July, 2024)

[sally]

[der kulterer]

starting point...
(↓↓↓ all the Austria-related films that i logged since logging on KM — from shortest to longest)
((as the picture above suggests, i "suffered" an extensive Ulrich Seidl episode before the time of the list — watched nearly everything by him))
(((also Valie Export frenzy pre-dates the list)))

42/83: No Film (Kurt Kren, 1983, 1m)
KatharinaViktoria (Viktoria Schmid, 2012, 1m)
Psycho (Martin Arnold, 1997, 1m)
I Have Been Very Pleased (Mara Mattuschka, 1987, 2m)
Les misérables (Mara Mattuschka, 1987, 2m)
34/77: Tschibo (Kurt Kren, 1977, 2m)
Featherarrangement (Linda Christanell, 1984, 3m)
Delight (Thomas Draschan, 2009, 3m)
Don't - Der Österreichfilm (Martin Arnold, 1993, 3m)
Ulrike (Stefan Stratil, 2004, 3m)
Attention / Hello 35 (Viktoria Schmid, 2010, 3m)
The Temple Of Lilith (James Quinn, 2017, 3m)
Cerolax II (Mara Mattuschka, 1985, 3m)
pliii (Tina Frank, 2021, 4m)
NavelFable (Mara Mattuschka, 1984, 4m)
Shimmer (Betty Blitz, 2019, 4m)
The Sinking of Titania (Mara Mattuschka, 1985, 4m)
Caesarean Section (Mara Mattuschka, 1987, 4m)
Timeblood (Peter Weibel, 1972, 4m)
3​/60: Trees in Autumn (Kurt Kren, 1960, 5m)
Parallax (Inger Lise Hansen, 2009, 5m)
5/62: People Looking out of the Window, Trash, etc. (Kurt Kren, 1962, 5m)
Selfportrait (Maria Lassnig, 1971, 5m)
Parasympathica (Mara Mattuschka, 1985, 5m)
Pascal - Gödel (Mara Mattuschka, 1986, 5m)
Accelerated Lines (Manuel Knapp, 2005, 5m)
Distorted Areas (Manuel Knapp, 2008, 5m)
12 Explosions (Johann Lurf, 2008, 6m)
Switchersex (Peter Weibel, 1972, 6m)
Ball-Head - Ode to IBM (Mara Mattuschka, 1985, 6m)
Monodrom (Peter Weibel, 1974, 6m)
Hyperbulie (Valie Export, 1973, 7m)
31/75: Asylum (Kurt Kren, 1975, 8m)
The Ballad of Maria Lassnig (Hubert Sielecki, Maria Lassnig, 1992, 8m)
Couples (Maria Lassnig, 1972, 9m)
Tritity (Peter Weibel, 1975, 9m)

Shapes (Maria Lassnig, 1971, 10m)
Embargo (Johann Lurf, 2015, 10m)
Beauty and the Beast (Mara Mattuschka, 1993, 10m)
S.O.S. Extraterrestria (Mara Mattuschka, 1994, 10m)
ID (Mara Mattuschka, 2003, 10m)
The Sex of Self-Hatred (Solomon Nagler, 2004, 10m)
Stroboscopic Noise (Manuel Knapp, 2008, 10m)
Interferenzen (Manuel Knapp, 2005, 11m)
Voidov (Manuel Knapp, 2012, 14m)
Momentum 142310 (Manuel Knapp, 2018, 15m)
Bloodletting (Peter Tscherkassky, 1981, 15m)
Visibility of Interim (Manuel Knapp, 2006, 15m)
Operation Jane Walk (Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, 2018, 16m)
Endeavour (Johann Lurf, 2011, 16m)
Hausmusik (Peter Weibel, 1974, 18m)

Do They Speak Color? (Billy Roisz, Dieter Kovačič, 2022, 22m)
The Vienna Savings Bank (Stan Neumann, 1998, 28m)

Maria Lassnig, It is the Art, that… (Sepp Dreissinger, Heike Schäfer, 2015, 45m)

A Day with Zaha Hadid (Michael Blackwood, 2004, 58m)

The Last Image (Judith Zdesar, 2020, 70m)
Kulterer (Vojtěch Jasný, 1974, 77m)
Lovely Rita (Jessica Hausner, 2001, 79m)
Gangster Girls (Tina Leisch, 2008, 79m)

In the Basement (Ulrich Seidl, 2014, 81m)
Flaming Ears (Ursula Pürrer, Hans Scheirl, Dietmar Schipek, 1992, 84m)
Ant Street (Michael Glawogger, 1995, 87m)

Beatrix (Milena Czernovsky, Lilith Kraxner, 2021, 95m)
Elfriede Jelinek – Language Unleashed (Claudia Müller, 2022, 96m)
Lourdes (Jessica Hausner, 2009, 96m)
Notes on Marie Menken (Martina Kudláček, 2006, 97m)
Young Dr. Freud (Axel Corti, 1976, 98m)

1. April 2000 (Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1952, 105m)
How We Live - Messages to the Family (Gustav Deutsch, 2017, 107m)

Feldberg (Michael Pilz, 1990, 115m)

The Moor's Head (Paulus Manker, 1995, 120m)
Burg Theatre (Willi Forst, 1936, 122m)

The Murer Case (Christian Frosch, 2018, 137m)

[greennui]

The land of Johann Scwarzer and Viennese Actionism.

[der kulterer]

THE IMPOSSIBLE PICTURE (Sandra Wollner, 2016) #CoMoÖsterreich

Vienna in the 1950’s. A childhood captured on 8mm film, documented by 13-year-old Johanna. A childhood as it might have been.



We see fragments of family life and family secrets, an apartment regularly visited by women, centered around grandmother Maria Steinwendner who holds weekly cooking clubs in her kitchen. But somehow, the women never actually seem to do any cooking.

[der kulterer]

MY FATHERS, MY MOTHER AND ME (Paul-Julien Robert, 2012) #CoMoÖsterreich

Communal property, free sexuality, dissolution of the nuclear family — these were the basic principles of the Friedrichshof, the largest commune in Europe founded by the Viennese Actionist Otto Mühl at the beginning of the 1970’s.

In „MY FATHERS, MY MOTHER & ME“, the director Paul-Julien Robert, who was born into this commune, embarks on a personal journey into his past. Including archive material made public for the first time in this film, the director confronts himself and his mother with the question “What is family?”

what is family?

murdering of the father figure & dissolution of the nuclear family

Some members of the younger generation are grappling with the trauma in different ways. There is Paul-Julien Robert, born at Friedrichshof in 1979 and who now lives in Vienna. His 2012 film My Fathers, My Mother, and Me is a heart-wrenching documentary in which he, on camera, dives into his childhood on the commune and confronts his mother, who joined Friedrichshof in her 20s.

There’s also Jeanne Tremsal, a Berlin restaurateur who lived in Friedrichshof as a child. She and the artist and film director Christopher Roth have made a feature film called Servus Papa, See You in Hell, based on her experiences, which is set to be released this summer. The film is the first feature to take on the Friedrichshof subject from a child’s point of view. (The 2009 documentary The Children Of The Commune also covers this generation, but from an adult perspective.)

a toxic person making notable art is not a new concept

Otto Mühl
→ https://www.artforum.com/columns/otto-muhl-217909/

How Should the Art World Handle the Dark Legacy of Viennese Actionist and Convicted Sex Offender Otto Muehl? His Victims Have a Few Ideas
→ https://news.artnet.com/art-world/how-t ... cy-1942254

[der kulterer]

SPACE SEEING - SPACE HEARING (Valie Export, 1974) #CoMoÖsterreich

The video Space Seeing – Space Hearing arose from a performance by Valie Export at the Kölnischer Kunstverein.
For the performance, the artist stood upright and motionless in the centre of an empty museum room.


Four video cameras filmed her, broadcasting still frames of her body on four screens.
The screens broadcast six different images of the artist, on the right or left of the screen, in the foreground or background, full-length or in close-up.



Each position in space was characterised by a change in volume, the duration of the repetition, or the pitch of the sound.
The result was broadcast on a fifth monitor with a split screen that synchronised sound and image.



It shows Valie Export becoming her own twin, splitting in two, distancing herself from and coming close to the camera, representing the complex relationship between body and space.

seen (???) by 22-year-old Ulrich Seidl and subsequently exploited (???) in his infamous tableau vivants.

[der kulterer]

Leo Schatzl, PART ONE

The subversive, ironic analysis of systems of social control; pseudo-scientific technical experiments, for example with objects of daily use; and the “manipulation” of our visual habits with the help of technical apparatus — these are central aspects of artistic work of Leo Schatzl.
(Martin Sturm)

1/
War Etc. (Leo Schatzl, 1983, 4m) #CoMoÖsterreich

Schatzl’s schizophrenic animation of planes and falling paratroopers.

2/
Max./Extramax. (Leo Schatzl, 1986, 4m) #CoMoÖsterreich

there is no official/revelatory information about this film whatsoever...
so, in my uninhibited opinion, it's a utopic/cynical (???) short film noir — detective and villain share the same cig (???)



3/
Mobile Mattress (Leo Schatzl, 1988, 3m) #CoMoÖsterreich

viz ↑↑ “pseudo-scientific technical experiments with objects of daily use”

A motorized mattress darts across an icy road to a soundtrack by Coil.

... and texts from The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil on top

4/
SW-EGO (v.4) (Leo Schatzl, 1990, 4m) #CoMoÖsterreich

another Austrian — not pre-Seidl like in the previous post ↑↑↑↑, but peri-Seidl this time — looking into the “evil” potential of the (“orderly”) symmetry

[der kulterer]

today, in honor of the arrival of peaking hunting season, CoMo with the collaboration of The National Rifle Association (NRA) & Gun Owners of America (GOA) is launching a special program, consisting of three screenings:
1/ SAFARI (Ulrich Seidl, 2016)
2/ OUR TRIP TO AFRICA (Peter Kubelka, 1966)
3/ THE HUNTING PARTY (Claus Peymann, 1974)

1/
SAFARI (Ulrich Seidl, 2016) #CoMoÖsterreich

"Fassbinder died, so God gave us Ulrich Seidl." (John Waters)

After you fire, at first, it's like...
You let out a deep breath.
And anxiously look at the piece to see what it does.
To see if the sketch was good or not.
And then so many emotions well up.
All kinds.
It just pours out.
Either joy, when you see you got a good hit.
Or anxiety and doubts, if you see it running away.

[der kulterer]

2/
OUR TRIP TO AFRICA (Peter Kubelka, 1966) #CoMoÖsterreich

Kubelka was hired in 1961 by a couple from Wels, Austria, to document a hunting trip they were taking with three other people.

Once the group returned to Vienna, the couple who commissioned the film expected Kubelka would take four to six weeks to complete the film; however, the process ended up lasting five years. Kubelka produced what he described as a "vocabulary" from his recordings. He cut out three frames from each shot and placed them on a card, arranging them by color, rhythm, subject, and theme. There were roughly 1,400 shots in total. For each of the audio recordings, he transcribed the sounds phonetically into a version of a symphonic score.

In 1966 Kubelka premiered the completed film for the people who commissioned the film, along with friends and other artists. Upset with how they were portrayed, they nearly attacked him after the screening.




Their lawyers demanded that he turn over the film so they could destroy it; the parties reached an agreement that Kubelka would not screen Our Trip to Africa in their hometown.

[der kulterer]

CATHERINE THE LAST (Hermann Kosterlitz AKA Henry Koster, 1936) #CoMoÖsterreich

https://festival.ilcinemaritrovato.it/e ... ie-letzte/

She almost has saved enough money to buy herself a cow: Katharina (Franziska Gaal) longs for self-sufficiency, but for now she works as a kitchen hand for a rich industrialist (Otto Wallburg). A poor, illiterate peasant girl, she is shunned even by her fellow servants — and in one of the film’s many ironic twists it is precisely this, her low social status, that attracts the interest of Hans von Gerstikow (Hans Holt). A flashy playboy of somewhat dubious social standing himself, he starts wooing Katharina in order to gain access to another woman, the daughter of her employer.


Katharina – die Letzte is the last of three hugely successful films Gaal made with the well-matched creative team of director Hermann Kosterlitz, producer Joe Pasternak, and screenwriter Felix Joachimson. Even more so than the previous two, it combines the musical-comedy tradition with a fairy-tale-like structure and feel, with Cinderella being the most obvious influence. Drawing on established popular fantasies, Kosterlitz and Joachimson craft an intricate narrative in which escapist sentimentality and social realism are two sides of the same coin.


Gaal’s performance of enlightened naivete is very much at the centre of it. Her Katharina is a holy fool, incapable of falsehood and pretence, and it is this trust in the world and its surface appearances, that makes her the centre of every intrigue. In the end she who sees through nobody uncovers the falseness of everybody. While her purest of hearts can only be corrupted by the truest of loves.

this horror movie (yes, it is a horror!) starts as one of the usual melodramatic horrors offering a poor viewer the nightmarish picture of a socially disadvantaged (thus vulnerable) girl who is not aware (as opposed to us the all-seeing viewers) she is falling into the clutches of a privileged womanizing sociopath with no scruples to open his victim's chest with a knife of feigned passion and make her heart bleed to death.

but, while you witness this terrible tragedy, something even worse starts to unveil.
something elaborated on in the book called "Nazi Film Melodrama" (by Laura Heins, University of Illinois Press, 2013).
you suddenly start to feel the illiterate maid might try to escape her inevitable doom by becoming complicit in forming the threesome consisting of a high-status male conqueror (who doesn't give a fuck about the Christian values of monogamy & nuclear family), his high-status dominatrix wife (who can provide high-status offsprings), and the maid promoted to the inferior status of one of the co-wifes.


fortunately enough, instead of the "nazi melodrama" scenario, the transformative power of selfless love causes the doom of the sociopath who gets self-aware of his self-debilitating bastardy.


but even then (reaching the "happy end") the audience can't be relieved of the horror because one can envision all the troubles the couple with socially incompatible backgrounds will face in the class-stratified society.
a thoughtful viewer worries & hopes that all the many days & nights to come won't be spent only in bed (brainlessly consummating passion) but also filled with hard labor to gain literacy and become familiar with feminist literature (because, despite the hero being literate, he lacks erudition in this field to the same degree as the illiterate heroine).


thus, despite the (seeming) happy end, CATHERINE THE LAST leaves the viewer terrified & confused & busy developing (in his own head) possible scenarios for a sustainable bright future — all of this being a sign of a good film!

additional side note:
whoever wants to watch the same film and escape all this inner turmoil of horror viewing, there is also a remake from 1938 (two years later) called "The Girl Downstairs" by Norman Taurog.
i didn't watch this remake but, considering it's a pure Hollywood production, i assume in this version the happy end is delivered free of any disturbing afterthoughts.
i guess the viewer (of the remake) will be fooled to believe our couple is entering (despite their background and prevailing toxic social stratification) a harmonious monogamous relationship blessed by the Lord (of the Patriarchy) who by His almighty power (& set of tabus) ensures there will be no domestic abuse in their household until the end of time.

[rischka]

he's not wrong. thx jiri u made me laugh i wish i had something to contribute

[der kulterer]

yw, rischka! your contribution would be nice.
but your good work of pissing off the KG idiots is important/praiseworthy too!

[rischka]

LOL thx gonna ignore the news for awhile xD

[der kulterer]

THE WHITE HORSE INN (Karel Lamač, 1935) #CoMoÖsterreich

Im weißen Rößl is an operetta or musical comedy by Ralph Benatzky and Robert Stolz in collaboration with a number of other composers and writers, set in the picturesque Salzkammergut region of Upper Austria. It is about the head waiter of the White Horse Inn in St. Wolfgang who is desperately in love with the owner of the inn, a resolute young woman who at first only has eyes for one of her regular guests.

When the barometer indicates it’s summer again
and when the holidays are imminent,
then I’m happy.



Then the hobnailed shoes take me on their own
to where I’m a regular guest,
do you know where?



At the White Horse Inn on Lake Wolfgang,
happiness waits at the door
and calls out to you:
Good morning, come in and forget your troubles!



And if you have to leave,
saying farewell is painful
because you have lost your heart
at the White Horse Inn on the lake,
at the White Horse Inn on the lake.

culmination of this CoMo!
the most entertaining film since the invention of the barometer!

[rischka]

i will watch it!! meanwhile i found something to contribute





it's adolf wohlbrück (b. 1896 in vienna) seen here in rheinhold schünzel's viktor und viktoria (1933)

[wba]

Didn't know Lamac directed a version of Im weißen Rößl.
I checked Wikipedia, and it says there are at least 8 films based on the play. Must have been extremely popular.
I'll keep it on my radar and will try to find a copy.

[sally]

walbrook was austrian? this changes everythiiiiiiing, insanely handsome

i watched catherine the last and the white horse inn and concur with jiri, both excellent: after i rewatched harvey earlier this year and now that, definitely think koster needs investigating....and lamac was a truly great comic director, almost lubitschian, should definitely be more renowned, especially for his silents.

i am still having trouble posting/seeing pics here, no clue why

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

walbrook was austrian? this changes everythiiiiiiing, insanely handsome

[wba]

walbrook was austrian? this changes everythiiiiiiing, insanely handsome

If you ever plan on visiting Austira, unfortunately I have to inform you that not all Austrians are as handsome as Wohlbrück (whom I also find gorgeous, btw).

[der kulterer]

3/
The Hunting Party (Claus Peymann, 1974) #CoMoÖsterreich

The play The Hunting Party, which premiered in 1974 at the Vienna Burgtheater, had a special meaning for Bernhard: he described it several times as one of his most successful works, and for the first time, a kind of literary mirror figure of the author appeared in it in the form of a dramatic writer.

The writer is a guest in a hunting lodge in the middle of the forest, which belongs to a general and his wife.


As the plot progresses, however, it becomes clear that the existence of the apparently powerful man has long since been undermined. The general, who — like many of Bernhard's characters — cannot escape his past (symbolically marked by the loss of an arm in the Battle of Stalingrad), is — initially without knowing it — already fatally ill; in addition, the bark beetle has infested the forest around the hunting lodge in which the general and his wife once found refuge (after the World War),




and his ministers are also working to dismantle him politically.


When he learns the truth about himself from the writer's hints, he commits suicide.


Bernhard follows one of the basic aims of his writing, the literary dismantling of those in power and their structures: the ruler perishes, the ironic observer who reflects on his existence in the medium of literature remains alive.



Bernhard also engages in a kind of poetic self-portrayal in this piece: just like himself, the writer assigns himself the position of the distanced observer.



And when he talks about dealing with his existential fears, he describes Bernhard's characteristic technique of self-ironicization: "we don't talk about it / and when we talk about it / we talk about it / as if / what we're talking about / wasn't real [...] so that we can bear it / endure it."

Sitting through this play must have been an exercise in tedium.

[sally]

dirt - paulus manker (1986) #CoMoÖsterreich

so after watching this 'magical realist' descent into allegorical insanity i had to check and yes, gerald kargl (of angst) is also austrian as well as manker - there apparently IS an austrian aesthetic (beyond, but connected to seidl/haneke and grandpappy bernhard etc), and it's sordid, bleak, horrific and very very grimy

funny, cuz the literature is like that too, and i love that

[der kulterer]

two enjoyable — first (short) less, second (long) more — socialist agitprop films of the Red Vienna

→ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Vienna
Red Vienna (German: Rotes Wien) was the colloquial name for the capital of Austria between 1918 and 1934, when the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria (SDAP) maintained almost unilateral political control over Vienna and, for a short time, over Austria as a whole. During this time, the SDAP pursued a rigorous program of construction projects across the city in response to severe housing shortages and implemented policies to improve public education, healthcare, and sanitation.

1/
The Adventure of Mr. Antimarx (Unknown, 1929) #CoMoÖsterreich

Mr. Antimarx (born of the clergy, pampered by landowners, bankers, and the army) smashes his head over the walls of the newly-built modernist Red Vienna


2/
The Notebook of Mr. Pim (Frank Ward Rossak, 1930) #CoMoÖsterreich

an American far-right journalist visits Red Vienna, becomes converted to socialism, and gets a permanent erection (also called priapism)


especially noteworthy are the sequences documenting breathtaking social housing development



but don't think that quantity won over quality then!
the featured (splendid) Karl-Marx-Hof is always a part of any decent architectural textbook (dealing with the era)
→ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-Marx-Hof
→ https://hiddenarchitecture.net/red-vien ... -marx-hof/


all this in sharp contrast to the preceding (and nowadays again victorious) dumb notion of housing being just another trading commodity

[der kulterer]

Leo Schatzl, PART TWO

5/
Akzidenz (Leo Schatzl, 1991) #CoMoÖsterreich

delights of the car destruction
(start container, 150m acceleration track, remote-controlled cars, wooden ramp, wet concrete)


6/
T.Z. USA 1991 - Going Fast Slow (v.4) (Leo Schatzl, 1991) #CoMoÖsterreich

Road trip fast-forwarded to the point of abstraction.

7/
Wall (Leo Schatzl, 1992) #CoMoÖsterreich



8/
Maschinenkampf FX/LS (Leo Schatzl, 1992) #CoMoÖsterreich

pastimes of the junkyard

[sally]

baroque statues - maria lassnig (1974) #CoMoÖsterreich

In an associative montage statues of saints in rigid and rapt poses are cross cut with those of real actors until the two can no longer be told apart. Gradually the real bodies break away from the constraints of their wooden models through increasingly improvised dance. A successful act of liberation from (Catholic) convention, which the material celebrates in an ecstasy of multiple exposures and psychedelic colors.

[der kulterer]

Leo Schatzl, PART THREE

9/
Oxo Wonder Vision (2) (Leo Schatzl, 1996) #CoMoÖsterreich

Short film of the installation of the same name: Two hot plates with large soup pots on top of them. A TV monitor in between. In place of an antenna, two tubes stick out of the monitor with upside-down funnels attached to their ends.

10/
Fax Me / Homerun 1996 (Leo Schatzl, 1996) #CoMoÖsterreich

A world journey via fax of a self-portrait.

11/
Tabu Zone #2 (Leo Schatzl, 1998) #CoMoÖsterreich

The Tabu Zone #2 Project (1993-1998), a production for the Festival of the Regions (in Upper Austria), was realised in the village of Münzbach: An area of approximately 1000 square metres was fenced off and excluded from any kind of cultural activity under threat of five years’ punishment. A fixed surveillance camera took pictures of the zone (when it worked) at 15-minute intervals. The short film shows a fast-motion selection of the footage taken over the five years.

12/
Vanishing Points (Leo Schatzl, 2005) #CoMoÖsterreich

[der kulterer]

The City Without Jews (H.K. Breslauer, 1924) #CoMoÖsterreich