{"id":81712,"date":"2020-02-05T17:38:02","date_gmt":"2020-02-05T16:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/zur-person-jessica-hausner\/"},"modified":"2022-10-18T11:42:28","modified_gmt":"2022-10-18T09:42:28","slug":"zur-person-jessica-hausner","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/en\/zur-person-jessica-hausner\/","title":{"rendered":"Spotlight on: Jessica Hausner"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Diagonale\u201920 was cancelled due to official measures to contain the spread of COVID-19.<\/p>\n

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Jessica Hausner \u00a9 Diagonale\/Niko Havranek<\/p><\/div>\n
With the Spotlight on<\/u> series, the Diagonale\u201920 turns its focus on the director Jessica Hausner and her widely acclaimed film oeuvre. Beginning from her most recent film Little Joe<\/em>, which was the only Austrian entry represented in the competition at the Cannes film festival, the Diagonale\u201920 will show a comprehensive retrospective of Hausner\u2019s oeuvre including the rediscovery of her early works as a film student.<\/p>\n
Jessica Hausner will be available for interviews in the run-up to the Diagonale. She will also personally attend all screenings in the Spotlight on<\/u> program, as will additional guests, such as the cameraman and coop99 co-founder Martin Gschlacht, costume designer Tanja Hausner, screenplay author and director G\u00e9raldine Bajard, actor and director H\u00e4ndl Klaus, and Markus Binder, member of the band Attwenger, for whom Hausner created several music videos.<\/p>\n
For the fifth time, the Spotlight on<\/u> series will thereby trace the individual stages and passages of recent Austrian film history along a prominent biography and artistic oeuvre.<\/p>\n
Complex, artful, prize-winning
\n<\/u>Feature films with terse handwriting <\/u><\/h3>\n
Right from the start, Jessica Hausner\u2019s films have seemed unconventional. One of her most noteworthy stylistic means is the \u201cstrangely uninvolved, distanced gaze at the characters and their endeavors,\u201d explains film critic Dominik Kamalzadeh in an essay about Hausner\u2019s work, which will be published in the Diagonale\u201920 catalogue in March. Hausner\u2019s early works created at the Viennese Film Academy already herald this distinctive gesture. Even though the coming-of-age short Flora<\/em> (AT 1996) and the fifty-minute Film Academy graduation work Inter-View<\/em> (AT 1999) still appear deeply bound to the real (youth) milieu of the 1990s, as Kamalzadeh continues, evident here, too, is the \u201ccharacteristic relativizing moment of her films, an imponderableness in view of the characters and their predicaments.\u201d Hausner would go on to emphasize this ambiguity in her staging ever more strongly over the years and thereby advance to become the \u201cmost important international Austrian filmmaker of the present day.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Hotel \u00a9 coop99<\/p><\/div>\n
From the Viennese Film Academy to Cannes and Venice<\/u><\/h3>\n
Jessica Hausner, whose films always also have the courage to leave narrative gaps, was born in Vienna in 1972 and studied film directing at the Film Academy Vienna. Already her short film Flora<\/em> received a \u201cLeopard of Tomorrow\u201d award at the international film festival Locarno, Inter-View<\/em> was honored in 1999 in the context of the Cin\u00e9fondation at the film festival in Cannes. In the same year, Hausner co-founded the production firm coop99 together with Barbara Albert, Antonin Svoboda, and Martin Gschlacht. Her first premiere in Cannes laid the tracks for her international career. For example, just a few years later, both her debut feature film Lovely Rita<\/em> (AT\/DE 2001) as well as the thriller Hotel<\/em> (AT\/DE 2004), for which Hausner wrote the screenplay herself, were presented in the \u201cUn Certain Regard\u201d series in Cannes. In Lovely Rita,<\/em> the filmmaker takes up the coming-of-age theme of her short Flora<\/em>\u00a0and with her story about a pubescent girl who overburdens everyone with her sexuality, exposes the lack of relationships in everyday life. Lovely Rita<\/em> was, furthermore, the first production by the coop99 film production. At the center of the psycho-thriller Hotel<\/em>, for its part, is the receptionist at a mountain hotel whose fate begins becomes interwoven with that of her predecessor who disappeared under mysterious circumstances.<\/p>\n
Five years after Hotel,<\/em> Jessica Hausner and her established team realized the drama Lourdes<\/em> (AT\/FR\/DE 2009), which had its world premiere in the competition of the international film festival in Venice and was honored with the FIPRESCI prize. Once again, Hausner wrote the screenplay herself about the miraculous healing of Christine (Sylvie Testud), afflicted with multiple sclerosis, who travels to the pilgrimage site Lourdes and can suddenly walk again. Hausner\u2019s next film, Amour Fou<\/em> (AT\/LU\/DE 2014), brought her back to the festival series \u201cUn Certain Regard.\u201d The film, which deals with the tragic biography of the German writer Heinrich von Kleist, celebrated its premiere in Cannes. The historical setting of the narrative demanded an elaborate production and costume design. A special challenge for outfitter Katharina W\u00f6ppermann and costume designer Tanja Hausner, the filmmaker\u2019s sister and steady companion. A further highlight in Hausner\u2019s career was the premiere of her sixth feature film, Little Joe<\/em> (AT\/DE\/UK 2019), this time in the competition of the film festival in Cannes. The futuristic sci-fi fairy tale, which tells of a genetically manipulated plant whose odor infects people and makes them happy, is Hausner\u2019s first film in English. The main actress, Emily Beecham, was honored at the Croisette for her performance and awarded a Golden Palm. The sounds in Hausner\u2019s work, which alternates between psycho-thriller and horror drama, go back to her revered Japanese avant-garde composer Teiji Ito.<\/p>\n
Women characters between imagination, self-will, and reality<\/span><\/h3>\n
At the center of Hausner\u2019s works are always women characters who through their endeavors and at times, also their well-concealed needs, run the danger of becoming isolated from their social environments. In this, they are thoroughly self-willed in the face of life\u2019s uncontrollability. \u201cThe films do not appropriate their heroines, they work mischievously against narrative harmonies and certainties,\u201d attests film journalist Dominik Kamalzadeh in the previously mentioned essay.<\/p>\n
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Amour Fou \u00a9 coop99<\/p><\/div>\n
The art of artificiality
\n<\/u>From camera to costume <\/u><\/h3>\n
As her oeuvre continues, Hausner moves more decidedly away from naturalism: The artificiality of her cinema is rigorously planned, the camera by Martin Gschlacht likes to guide the viewers\u2019 gaze awry. Also, the settings, colors, and no least the costumes by Tanja Hausner \u2013 for Amour fou<\/em>, for example, in collaboration with the hat manufacturer M\u00fchlbauer \u2013 emphasize the gaps that open between the characters, their ideas, and the real world. (see Dominik Kamalzadeh, \u201cL\u00fccken, die das Leben l\u00e4sst,\u201d essay in the Diagonale\u201920 catalogue, in German only)<\/p>\n
Hausner\u2019s cinema
\n<\/u>From Menken to Deren and Hammid, from Teiji Ito to Attwenger<\/u><\/h3>\n
The compilation of the series makes visible how Jessica Hausner conceives of film and cinema and the influences that have become noticeable in her hitherto creation. Shown in addition to her own films, will be two key works from the U.S. avant-garde by Maya Deren and Marie Menken. Like Hausner in her most recent film, Little Joe<\/em>, both use the music of the legendary Japanese composer Teiji Ito.<\/p>\n
The program will be complemented by an extensive Diagonale im Dialog following the screening of Little Joe<\/em> and a Listening Session with Jessica Hausner and musician Markus Binder (Attwenger), in which both talk anecdotally about their aesthetic views and personal preferences while listening to selected tracks of their favorite music.<\/p>\n
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Little Joe @ coop99\/The Bureau\/Essential Films<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cJessica Hausner\u2019s cinema is enchanting, captivating, at times unsettling \u2013 in the most fascinating and thereby best sense of the term. Her films are always elaborately designed, meticulous, thought through to the most minute detail, and precisely assembled. The viewers\u2019 spellbound gaze wants to positively linger on every individual sequence: in the dining hall in Lourdes<\/em>, along the plant beds in the green houses in Little Joe<\/em>, in the tidied corridors in Hotel<\/em>. Through the interaction of camera and precisely choreographed characters, whose frequently stylized appearances are, at the same time, expression and reflection of the staged milieu, they all become distinctive Hausner scenes<\/em>. Hausner\u2019s cinema counters distraction \u2013 which is one of the filmmaker\u2019s greatest claims to fame \u2013 and for all its rigor, her works are often highly pleasurable and filled with humor. Her cinema responds to the current fetish for authenticity with confidence and immense artificiality, and is thereby capable of more accurately describing the nature of our world \u2013 and of criticizing it.\u201d
\n\u2014 Sebastian H\u00f6glinger und Peter Schernhuber<\/span><\/p>\n
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Lourdes \u00a9 coop99<\/p><\/div>\n
Film list for Spotlight on: Jessica Hausner<\/u><\/h3>\n
\u2014 Little Joe<\/em> (D: Jessica Hausner, AT\/DE\/UK 2019)
\n<\/span>\u2014 Supporting intro film: Meshes of the Afternoon<\/em>
\n<\/em>\u00a0 \u00a0 (D: Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid, US 1943, sound by Teiji Ito 1959)
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Hotel<\/em> (D: Jessica Hausner, AT\/DE 2004)
\n\u2014 Supporting intro film: Attwenger \u2013 OIDA<\/em> (D: Jessica Hausner, AT 2015)
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Supporting intro film: Attwenger \u2013 Rhapsodariddim<\/em> (D: Jessica Hausner, AT 2017)
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Inter-View<\/em> (D: Jessica Hausner, AT 1999)<\/span>
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Ich m\u00f6chte sein manchmal ein Schmetterling<\/em> (D: Jessica Hausner, AT 1993)<\/span>
\n\u2014 Amour fou<\/em> (D: Jessica Hausner, AT\/LU\/DE 2014)
\n<\/span>\u2014 Lovely Rita<\/em> (D: Jessica Hausner, AT\/DE 2001)
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 Supporting follow-up film: Flora<\/em> (D: Jessica Hausner, AT 1996)
\n\u2014 Supporting intro film: Arabesque for Kenneth Anger<\/em> (D: Marie Menken, US 1961)
\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Lourdes<\/em> (D: Jessica Hausner, AT\/FR\/DE 2009)
\n\u2014 T<\/em><\/span>oast<\/em> (D: Jessica Hausner, AT 2006, Diagonale\u201906 trailer)<\/span><\/p>\n
The trailer version of Toast<\/em> will be shown before all screenings in the Spotlight on: Jessica Hausner<\/u> series.<\/p>\n
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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Diagonale\u201920 was cancelled due to official measures to contain the spread of COVID-19.  With the Spotlight on series, the Diagonale\u201920 turns its focus on the director Jessica Hausner and her widely acclaimed film oeuvre. Beginning from her most recent film Little Joe, which was the only Austrian entry represented in the competition at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-81712","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/81712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/81712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}