Special Program: Shooting Women 2. Space Invaders


Ein Bruder wie du (c) Filmarchiv Austria

The series “Shooting Women – Pioneering Women in Austrian Film,” which aired successfully last year, will continue in 2012. The fact that today, more and more female directors are establishing themselves in the industry, is not least thanks to their forerunners, women who in the course of decades fought for the right to express their own cinematic vision. In light of this, the Diagonale presents a thematic highlight program in cooperation with the Austrian Film Archive and presided over by Thomas Ballhausen, presenting a selection of documentary viewpoints revolving around biographical sketches.

“By means of moving images, capturing the essential” – this was the guiding principle of filmmakers Edith Hirsch and Sepp Jahn, who contributed the oldest work in the show. Tracing the life of Austrian author Alfons Petzold, the film Ein Bruder so wie Du (1973) shapes illustrative and avant-garde/experimental moving images. A great female writer also portrays Carmen Tartarotti in 1 Häufchen Blume 1 Häufchen Schuh (1989): Friederike Mayröcker. Equally uncompromising are the protagonists in Karin Berger’s debut documentary film Küchengespräche mit Rebellinnen (1984): Four Austrian women remember the time of their resistance against National Socialism. The massacre of Rechnitz, ten days before the end of the Second World War, an experience she was never able to come to terms with, is the theme of Margareta Heinrich’s Totschweigen (1994). Käthe Kratz brings this narrative into the present-day in her Abschied ein Leben lang (1999): a film which follows the reconstruction of a synagogue destroyed in the war through the commemorative project “Lost Neighborhood.”

In her debut feature film, Renata Schmidtkunz sheds light on a further remarkable personality. Das Weiterleben der Ruth Klüger (2011), depicts the now world famous author after her release from a concentration camp and her move to the United States.