Description
Book Synopsis Out of a film culture originally starved of funds have emerged rich and eclectic works by film-makers that are now achieving the international recognition that they deserve: Barbara Albert, Michael Haneke, Ulrich Seidl, and Stefan Ruzowitzky, to give four examples. This comprehensive critical anthology, by leading scholars of Austrian film, is intended to introduce and make accessible this much under-represented phenomenon. Although the book covers the full development of the Austrian new wave it focuses on the period that has brought it global attention: 1998 to the present. New Austrian Film is the only book currently available on this topic and will be an essential reference work for academics, students and filmmakers, interested in modern Austrian film.
Trade Review “In this excellent collection of essays on recent Austrian cinema – the first to attempt to define this body of films as a coherent whole – the editors Robert Dassanowsky and Oliver C. Speck settle upon the term New Austrian Film. They have assembled an impressive team of scholars with diverse backgrounds, interests and perspectives to offer 27 chapters analysing various aspects of Austrian cinema at the turn of the 21st century…[The editors] have done an exemplary editorial job, bringing the contributions together nicely without forcing them into a monotonous similarity of style, approach, or argument. Like the best examples of the films it analyses, New Austrian Filmweaves together a wide variety of narratives and perspectives to challenge its audience to see things differently. The volume is as handsome and professionally presented as we have come to expect from the publisher, Berghahn Books.” · Senses of Cinema
“…highly recommended to scholars, students, and film lovers.” · Monatshefte
“This volume is unreservedly recommended to those who are already familiar with Austrian film to some extent. They will welcome the in-depth treatment and overview of Austrian cinema and its most important representatives.” · Media Studies
“This is a rich volume that will broaden understanding and appreciation of Austrian film and Austrian-trained filmmakers.” · Austrian Studies
“A substantive, coherent, and nuanced volume that brings together first-class authors and presents up-to-date research not only by German-speaking but also by foreign scholars - a reflection of the growing awareness of Austrian film internationally… The scholarly expertise to be found in these rich contributions make reading this volume a pleasant experience.” · RAY Magazine
“Almost all of the essays are well written and argued; they are well worth the attention of anyone interested in contemporary German-language cinema or in the contemporary German-speaking world. They provide a useful introduction to a national cinema that should be of interest to cinephiles everywhere.” ·Journal of Austrian Studies
“This book opens by referencing a 2006 New York Timesarticle that characterized Austria as the ‘world capital of feel-bad cinema,’ and then sets out to complicate this aesthetic, an objective which the diverse and engaging contributions more than accomplish… Beyond the pessimistic storylines, it seems, there is another level on which these films function, a productive, didactic and perhaps even optimistic level that is tested and chronicled in this unique and valuable collection of current perspectives.” · Austrian Studies Newsletter
“New Austrian Film introduces a generation of Austrian and Austrian-trained Central European filmmakers to world cinema scholars and cinephiles, opening a vista on a resolutely political and multicultural cinema… This volume is well-balanced and conceived to provide historical, theoretical, and aesthetic frameworks that will draw both the professional and the enthusiast into a contemporary cinema too long overlooked as a distinctive voice on the international stage.” · Katherine Arens, University of Texas at Austin
“The essays in this volume provide both historical context and critical analysis for the politically and aesthetically significant filmmaking now being done in Austria. This is an exemplary collection, comprehensive in scope and rich in fascinating detail, that will help bring closer attention to a remarkable national cinema.” · Chris Fujiwara, editor of the International Federation of Film Critics journal, Undercurrents
Table of Contents Introduction: New Austrian Film: The Non-Exceptional Exception
PART I: EARLY VISIONS/INFLUENTIAL SITES
Chapter 1. "The Experiment is Not Yet Finished": VALIE EXPORT's Avant Garde Film
Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger
Chapter 2. Franz Antel's Bockerer Series: Constructing the Historical Myth of the Austrian Second Republic
Joseph Moser
Chapter 3. Historical Drama of a Well-Intentioned Kind: Wolfgang Glück's: 38: Auch das war Wien
Felix Tweraser
Chapter 4. Cartographies of Identity: Memory and History in Ruth Beckermann's Documentary Films
Christina Guenther
PART II: BARBARA ALBERT AND THE FEMALE RE-FOCUS
Chapter 5. A New Community of Women: Barbara Albert's Nordrand/Northern Skirts
Dagmar Lorenz
Chapter 6. Metonymic Visions: Globalization, Consumer Culture, and Mediated Affect in Barbara Albert's Böse Zellen/Free Radicals
Imke Meyer
Chapter 7. Place and Space of Contemporary Austria in Barbara Albert's Feature Films
Mary Wauchope
Chapter 8. Connecting with Others; Mirroring Difference: Films by Kathrin Resetarits – Director, Actress, and Writer
Verena Mund
Chapter 9. Not Politics but People: The "Feminine Aesthetic" of Valeska Grisebach and Jessica Hausner
Catherine Wheatley
PART III: MICHAEL HANEKE AND ULRICH SEIDL: A QUESTION OF SPECTATORIAL DESTINATION
Chapter 10. Allegory in Michael Haneke's The Seventh Continent
Eva Kuttenberg
Chapter 11. "What-Goes-Without-Saying": Michael Haneke's Confrontation with Myths in Funny Games
Gabi Wurmitzer
Chapter 12. Unseen/Obscene: The (Non-) Framing of the Sexual Act in Michael Haneke's La Pianiste
Catherine Wheatley
Chapter 13. The Possibility of Desire in a Conformist World: The Cinema of Ulrich Seidl
Matthias Frey
Chapter 14. Dog Days: Ulrich Seidl’s Fin-de-Siecle Vision
Justin Vicari
Chapter 15. Import and Export: Ulrich Seidl’s Indiscreet Anthropology of Migration
Martin Brady and Helen Hughes
PART IV: RE-VISIONS, SHIFTING CENTERS, CROSSING BORDERS
Chapter 16. Crossing Borders in Austrian Cinema at the Turn of the Century: Flicker, Allahyari, Albert
Nikhil Sathe
Chapter 17. The Resentment of One's Fellow Citizens Intensified into a Strong Sense of Community: Psychology and Misanthropy in Total Therapy, The Hold-up, and Caché
Andreas Böhn
Chapter 18. Trapped Bodies, Roaming Fantasies: Mobilizing the Constructions of Place and Identity in Florian Flicker's Suzie Washington
Gundolf Graml
Chapter 19. A Cinephilic Avant-Garde: The Films of Peter Tscherkassky, Martin Arnold, and Gustav Deutsch
Erika Balsom
PART V: STEFAN RUZOWITZKY AND NEO-CLASSIC TRENDS
Chapter 20. Screening Nazisms and Reclaiming the Horror Genre: Stefan Ruzowitzky's Anatomy Films
Alexandra Ludewig
Chapter 21. Beyond Borders and Across Genre Boundaries: Critical Heimat in Stefan Ruzowitzky's The Inheritors
Rachel Palfreyman
Chapter 22. A Genuine Dilemma: Ruzowitzky's The Counterfeiters as Moral Experiment
Raymond Burt
Chapter 23. National Box Office Hits - International "Arthouse"? The New Austrokomödie
Regina Standún
PART VI: AUSTRIA AND BEYOND AS TERRA INCOGNITA: GLAWOGGER, SAUPER, SPIELMANN
Chapter 24. Austria Plays Itself and Sees Da Him: Notes on the Image of Austria in the Films of Michael Glawogger
Christoph Huber
Chapter 25. Configurations of the Authentic in Hubert Sauper'sDarwin's Nightmare
Arno Russegger
Chapter 26. The Lady in the Lake: Austria's Images in Götz Spielmann'sAntares
Sara Hall
Chapter 27. "Children of Optimism": An Interview with Götz Spielmann on Revanche and New Austrian Film
Catherine Wheatley
Selected Filmography
Contributors
Index
