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

INTRODUCTION New Austrian Film: The Non-Exceptional Exception I. EARLY VISIONS/INFLUENTIAL SITE 1. Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger - "The Experiment is Not Yet Finished": VALIE EXPORT's Avant Garde Film 2. Joseph Moser - Franz Antel's Bockerer Series: Constructing the Historical Myth of the Austrian Second Republic 3. Felix Tweraser - Historical Drama of a Well-Intentioned Kind: Wolfgang Gluck's 38: Auch das war Wien 4. Christina Guenther - Cartographies of Identity: Memory and History in Ruth Beckermann's Documentary Films II. BARBARA ALBERT AND THE FEMALE RE-FOCUS 5. Dagmar Lorenz - A New Community of Women: Barbara Albert's Nordrand/Northern Skirts 6. Imke Meyer - Metonymic Visions: Globalization, Consumer Culture, and Mediated Affect in Barbara Albert's Bose Zellen/Free Radicals 7. Mary Wauchope - Place and Space of Contemporary Austria in Barbara Albert's Feature Films 8. Verena Mund - Connecting with Others; Mirroring Difference: Films by Kathrin Resetarits - Director, Actress, and Writer 9. Catherine Wheatley - Not Politics but People: The "Feminine Aesthetic" of Valeska Grisebach and Jessica Hausner III. MICHAEL HANEKE AND ULRICH SEIDL: A QUESTION OF SPECTATORIAL DESTINATION 10. Eva Kuttenberg - Allegory in Michael Haneke's The Seventh Continent 11. Gabi Wurmitzer - "What-Goes-Without-Saying": Michael Haneke's Confrontation with Myths in Funny Games 12. Catherine Wheatley - Unseen/Obscene: The (Non-) Framing of the Sexual Act in Michael Haneke's La Pianiste 13. Matthias Frey - The Possibility of Desire in a Conformist World: The Cinema of Ulrich Seidl 14. Justin Vicari - Dog Days: Ulrich Seidl's Fin-de-Siecle Vision 15. Martin Brady and Helen Hughes - Import and Export: Ulrich Seidl's Indiscreet Anthropology of Migration IV. RE-VISIONS, SHIFTING CENTERS, CROSSING BORDERS 16. Nikhil Sathe - Crossing Borders in Austrian Cinema at the Turn of the Century: Flicker, Allahyari, Albert 17. Andreas Bohn - The Resentment of One's Fellow Citizens Intensified into a Strong Sense of Community: Psychology and Misanthropy in Total Therapy, The Hold-up, and Cache 18. Gundolf Graml - Trapped Bodies, Roaming Fantasies: Mobilizing the Constructions of Place and Identity in Florian Flicker's Suzie Washington 19. Erika Balsom - A Cinephilic Avant-Garde: The Films of Peter Tscherkassky, Martin Arnold, and Gustav Deutsch V. STEFAN RUZOWITZKY AND NEO-CLASSIC TRENDS 20. Alexandra Ludewig - Screening Nazisms and Reclaiming the Horror Genre: Stefan Ruzowitzky's Anatomy Films 21. Rachel Palfreyman - Beyond Borders and Across Genre Boundaries: Critical Heimat in Stefan Ruzowitzky's The Inheritors 22. Raymond Burt - A Genuine Dilemma: Ruzowitzky's The Counterfeiters as Moral Experiment 23. Regina Standun - National Box Office Hits -- International "Arthouse"? The New Austrokomodie 24. Florian Kroppel - Wolfgang Murnberger's Silentium! Or, the Question of Who is Actually Keeping Silent VI. AUSTRIA AND BEYOND AS TERRA INCOGNITA: GLAWOGGER, SAUPER, SPIELMANN 25. Christoph Huber - Austria Plays Itself and Sees Da Him: Notes on the Image of Austria in the Films of Michael Glawogger 26. Arno Russegger - Configurations of the Authentic in Hubert Sauper's Darwin's Nightmare 27. Sara Hall - The Lady in the Lake: Austria's Images in Gotz Spielmann's Antares 28. Catherine Wheatley - "Children of Optimism": An Interview with Gotz Spielmann on Revanche and New Austrian Film Selected Filmography Contributors Index

About the Author

Robert von Dassanowsky is Professor of German and Film Studies at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs and also works as an independent film producer. He is the author of Austrian Cinema: A History (2005), the first English language survey of that nation's film art. Other books include The Nameable and the Unnameable: Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s "Der Schwierige" Revisited (co-ed., 2011), Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds: A Manipulation of Metafilm (ed., 2012), World Film Locations: Vienna (ed., 2012), and Screening Transcendence: Film Under Austrofascism and the Hollywood Hope 1933–38 (2014).
 

Reviews

“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