{"id":87024,"date":"2024-03-21T11:50:32","date_gmt":"2024-03-21T10:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/?page_id=87024"},"modified":"2024-04-01T14:13:00","modified_gmt":"2024-04-01T12:13:00","slug":"position-christoph-hochhaeusler","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/en\/position-christoph-hochhaeusler\/","title":{"rendered":"| Position |\u00a0Christoph Hochh\u00e4usler |"},"content":{"rendered":"

Diagonale 2024 is dedicating a comprehensive retrospective<\/a> to filmmaker Christoph Hochh\u00e4usler.<\/p>\n

| Nachspann |
\n<\/strong>Bis ans Ende der Nacht<\/a>
\nSaturday, April 6, 5.30 p.m.
\nSchubertkino 1
\nMore information here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Christoph Hochh\u00e4usler is not only a filmmaker but also co-editor and founder of the German film magazine Revolver. In addition to Christoph Hochh\u00e4usler’s cinematic work, the Diagonale will be presenting the dialogue format Revolver Live<\/em><\/strong>! dedicated to cinematographer J\u00fcrgen J\u00fcrges<\/strong> in a guest appearance in Graz. In addition, Code inconnu<\/a> by Michael Haneke and Eisenhans<\/a> by Tankred Dorst, two films in which J\u00fcrges was responsible for the outstanding images, will be screened.<\/p>\n

| Revolver Live! Nr. 62 |<\/strong>
\nSunday, April 7, 11 a.m.
\nDiagonale Forum at the Heimatsaal
\nChristoph Hochh\u00e4usler and Nicolas Wackerbarth in conversation with J\u00fcrgen J\u00fcrges.<\/p>\n

More information on J\u00fcrgen J\u00fcrges here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

xxx<\/pre>\n
The Threads of Fiction
\n<\/strong>By Esther Buss<\/p>\n
In a seemingly insignificant scene in Die L\u00fcgen der Sieger<\/em> (2014), a journalist watches a wrestling show on television. Because he is talking on the phone with his intern at the same time, he is able to explain to her that the spectacle is merely the perfect orchestration: a so-called storyliner thought up an exciting story specifically for it.<\/p>\n
For a moment, the reference to a spectacle that is linked with excessive passion and pain seems alien in the rather bodiless world drafted by Christoph Hochh\u00e4usler\u2019s films. And also the investigative journalist who is enjoying the show, of course does not think that the made-up story could have anything to do with him. At the same time, in his investigation, he is about to get caught in a storyline himself.<\/p>\n
Christoph Hochh\u00e4usler\u2019s oeuvre, which currently comprises two short films and six features (a seventh is forthcoming and is set outside of Germany for the first time), revolves in diverse ways around lies, deception, manipulation, and play. In doing so, rather than in realistic environments, the stories occur in spaces or spheres: politics, financial capitalism, the media landscape, secret investigations\u2014thus fields that \u201cfictionalize\u201d to a great degree and survive through appearances, masquerade, and performances. Even bourgeois marriage and family are able to preserve their conventions in Hochh\u00e4usler\u2019s films only through ritual repetition and mimicry.<\/p>\n
\"\"
\u00a9 Caroline Lessire<\/p><\/div>\n
False Signs of Life<\/strong><\/p>\n
Hochh\u00e4usler\u2019s characters are distinguished by something supra-individual. Their deceptions are not based on human defects, but instead, are products of systems. The stepmother in Milchwald<\/em> (2003) who abandons the children on a country road at the German-Polish border participates in the search for them, embedded in silence. In Falscher Bekenner<\/em> (2005), the portrait of a young man, who in anonymous letters claims accidents to be intentional deeds that he carried out, the deception is already there in the title, and the protagonist\u2019s job interviews fail, no least, because of bad performances. On the other hand, in Unter Dir die Stadt<\/em> (2010), a \u201cbanker of the year\u201d who has compiled a fake biography from other people\u2019s narratives, and transferred his lover\u2019s husband to the other end of the world, asks his wife, \u201cHow would you know it\u2019s me?\u201d In Die L\u00fcgen der Sieger<\/em>, companies switch their names to cover up dirty business, while a PR agent works on influencing political decisions with targeted fake news. And in the trailer for Bis ans Ende der Nacht<\/em> (2023), we see an apartment being furnished and prepared with \u201cgenuine signs of life\u201d:\u00a0 in the course of a surveillance, a gay cop and a trans woman, who were once in love \u201cfor real,\u201d play a couple in it.<\/p>\n
But there is also another form of masquerade in Hochh\u00e4usler\u2019s works, an additional game, one with genre film, such as the detective story and political thriller. \u201cFor me, making films is a reflection, a game with how one could live, working on a model of the world without concealing the model character,\u201d says the director in his blog Parallelfilm. \u201cIf anything, sometimes I\u2019m more interested in the Frankenstein stitches than in what they are holding together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Productive Gaps<\/strong><\/p>\n
Reflection on film history, an awareness of form, and an approach that is interested in the translation of reality, are generally considered the signature of the so-called Berliner Schule, an informal collection of filmmakers declared a group by critics, based around (initially) Angela Schanelec, Thomas Arslan, and Christian Petzold. When Hochh\u00e4usler, who was born in Munich in 1972, presented Milchwald<\/em>, his feature film debut, he was immediately ascribed to a \u201csecond generation.\u201d At the same time, he didn\u2019t even yet know the works of the first generation, and moreover\u2014after two years of studying architecture in Berlin\u2014had completed his education at the Hochschule f\u00fcr Fernsehen und Film M\u00fcnchen (HFF Munich) before making a permanent move to the city that gives the \u201cSchule\u201d or \u201cschool\u201d its name. Looking back, it seems that Munich was formative to the extent that certain activities were clearly promoted by the gaps existing at the university (a lack of interest in creating theory): in 1998, Hochh\u00e4usler, together with Benjamin Heisenberg and Sebastian Kutzli, founded the film magazine Revolver<\/em>, in which mainly filmmakers write about the cinema and their work. The magazine still exists, twenty-five years later, with a different staff: as publication (in print, the format fits in almost every jacket pocket), as initiator of events, and as news service\u2014also for film-political issues.<\/p>\n
Right from the start, Hochh\u00e4usler combined filmmaking and writing about film; collaborative work is also a fixed component of his practice. The screenplays for most films were created in close collaboration with Benjamin Heisenberg, Ulrich Peltzer, and most recently, Florian Plumeyer; and together with image designers Bernhard Keller and Reinhold Vorschneider (and the editor Stefan Stabenow), Hochh\u00e4usler developed a unique visual aesthetic that gives expression to an increasingly impenetrable present: through atmospheres of twilight, reflections, and camera pans limited to narrow frames, which are coupled with an impersonal, palpating gaze.<\/p>\n
Hochh\u00e4usler\u2019s films are experimental arrangements, about both relationships\u2014systems and people, media and the economy, bodies and spaces, opacity and transparency\u2014and the cinema: about what one is still capable of believing in an omnipresence of images. With every film, Hochh\u00e4usler poses these questions anew, tries out something different. Similar to wrestling, beyond the ring, the gaze always falls on where we can still see the threads of fiction.<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
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Diagonale 2024 is dedicating a comprehensive retrospective to filmmaker Christoph Hochh\u00e4usler. | Nachspann | Bis ans Ende der Nacht Saturday, April 6, 5.30 p.m. Schubertkino 1 More information here.   Christoph Hochh\u00e4usler is not only a filmmaker but also co-editor and founder of the German film magazine Revolver. In addition to Christoph Hochh\u00e4usler’s cinematic work, […]<\/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-87024","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/87024","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=87024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/87024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}