New Austrian Film

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.

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.

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