American Passages
Ruth Beckermann
A fragmented and haunting image of the US between a spirit of departure and hopelessness at the beginning of the Obama era.
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American Passages
Credits
Producer
Ursula Wolschlager
Director
Ruth Beckermann
Cinematographer
Antoine Parouty, Lisa Rinzler
Editor
Dieter Pichler
Sound
Atanas Tcholakov, Matthew Dennis
A fragmented and haunting image of the US between a spirit of departure and hopelessness at the beginning of the Obama era, revolving around racism, the housing crisis, individualism and religion. Beckermann constructs an argument of contradictions that foreshadows current American politics and discovers only the detritus of the American Dream in all its perversity. What’s left is an amazed and curious collection of that which is still filmable. The US seem particularly well-adapted to the passage-like character of Beckermann’s works which take the liberty of letting people speak, not prejudices.
Patrick Holzapfel
Patrick Holzapfel
Auf amol a Streik
Ruth Beckermann, Josef Aichholzer
A look at the incendiary political situation in Austria at the end of the 1970s. It was the time that made Beckermann turn to film.
Auf amol a Streik
Credits
Producer
Ruth Beckermann, Josef Aichholzer
Director
Ruth Beckermann, Josef Aichholzer
Cinematographer
Ruth Beckermann, Josef Aichholzer
Editor
Ruth Beckermann, Josef Aichholzer
A look at the incendiary political situation in Austria at the end of the 1970s. It was the time that made Beckermann turn to film. First in collective efforts, here with Josef Aichholzer, who founded Filmladen distribution with Beckermann and Franz Grafl in 1978. Their motivation is clearly political. They listen where nobody else seems interested. The subject is a strike at the Semperit works in Traiskirchen. On different levels and by means of conversations, interviews, charts and photos the filmmakers try to understand what is otherwise treated only too superficially. Quite naturally the film lets the workers speak, too.
Patrick Holzapfel
Patrick Holzapfel
Die Geträumten
Ruth Beckermann
A sensitive dissection and an experiment with the discourse and the speechlessness of lovers: we see wet eyes and hear heavy swallowing in the face of words that sometimes weren’t even posted.
Die Geträumten
Credits
Director
Ruth Beckermann
Cinematographer
Johannes Hammel
Editor
Dieter Pichler
Script
Ruth Beckermann, Ina Hartwig
Sound
Georg Misch
A sensitive dissection and an experiment with the discourse and the speechlessness of lovers: we see wet eyes and hear heavy swallowing in the face of words that sometimes weren’t even posted. The long lasting correspondence between Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan is recorded by voice actors (Anja Plaschg and Laurence Rupp) in an ORF sound studio, interrupted by smoking breaks and short conversations that, like an echo, allow the words to have an effect in the present day. With co-author Ina Hartwig, Beckermann condensed the back and forth of emotions to an essence that could be seen as an impossible love story or a possible history of love.
Patrick Holzapfel
Patrick Holzapfel
Die papierene Brücke
Ruth Beckermann
It would be good to have no images of certain things, Beckermann’s urgent narrator’s voice says. That way they would be remembered.
Die papierene Brücke
Credits
Producer
Ruth Beckermann
Director
Ruth Beckermann
Cinematographer
Nurith Aviv
Editor
Gertraud Luschützky
Script
Ruth Beckermann
Sound
Josef Aichholzer, Reinhold Kaiser, Heinz Ebner
Cast
Betty Beckermann, Salo Beckermann, Herbert Gropper, Robert Schindel, Willy Stern, Rabbi Wassermann
It would be good to have no images of certain things, Beckermann’s urgent narrator’s voice says. That way they would be remembered. Her pulsating film essay, however, works against forgetting on a lost search for home. It is both a personal and a historical journey, undertaken by Beckermann with her camera and a restlessness that needs to know more. The weight of the past is made tangible by the wakeful and permissive registration of what is happening in the here and now. We drift through the remains of a Jewish identity in Czernowitz, Israel, the set of a television film made in former Yugoslavia and the Viennese streets where Kurt Waldheim divides the population.
Patrick Holzapfel
Patrick Holzapfel
Ein flüchtiger Zug nach dem Orient
Ruth Beckermann
The parallels drawn between the empress Elisabeth’s and Ruth Beckermann’s journeys tell of the luxury of strolling and a female eye in search of freedom.
Ein flüchtiger Zug nach dem Orient
Credits
Producer
Ruth Beckermann
Director
Ruth Beckermann
Music
Bruno Pisek, Peter Ponger, Ernst Zettl
Cinematographer
Nurith Aviv, Sophie Cadet
Editor
Gertraud Luschützky
Sound
Bruno Pisek
The parallels drawn between the empress Elisabeth’s and Ruth Beckermann’s journeys tell of the luxury of strolling and a female eye in search of freedom. In feverish parallels, the filmmaker follows the traces of the “Sissi” myth in Cairo and discovers an image transcending the oasis of wellbeing that is the romanticizing cult film. The results are masterfully interwoven in loose layers between home and freedom, loneliness and Orientalism. Doubts about her own image production are lurking everywhere. A longing to break out of preordained paths can be felt in every second. To see things the way a free woman could have seen them.
Patrick Holzapfel
Patrick Holzapfel
Mozart Enigma
Ruth Beckermann
The fictions of biographical securities are shaken by a fortune teller’s encounter with an edited picture of the young Mozart.
Mozart Enigma
Credits
Producer
Ruth Beckermann, Ruth Pfletschinger
Director
Ruth Beckermann
Cinematographer
Joerg Burger, Martin Putz
Editor
Dieter Pichler
Sound
Joerg Burger, Martin Putz
The fictions of biographical securities are shaken by a fortune teller’s encounter with an edited picture of the young Mozart. What life will be predicted for this man? Exposing an illusion is also the chance to see a new, different image. This ironic short film is one of many miniatures made by Austrian filmmakers in the Mozart anniversary year of 2006. In actual fact, it discusses one of the essential questions in Beckermann’s work: what is a just image and can it be produced at all?
Patrick Holzapfel
Patrick Holzapfel
Waldheims Walzer
Ruth Beckermann
Ruth Beckermann’s chronological analysis of the Waldheim affair is her first exclusive found footage work and at the same time a return to one of her essential themes: Kurt Waldheim.
Waldheims Walzer
Documentary Film
Austria
2018
93 minutes
Subtitles:
English
Credits
Producer
Ruth Beckermann
Director
Ruth Beckermann
Editor
Dieter Pichler
Script
Ruth Beckermann
Sound
Manuel Grandpierre, Rudolf Pototschnig
Ruth Beckermann’s chronological analysis of the Waldheim affair is her first exclusive found footage work and at the same time a return to one of her essential themes: Kurt Waldheim, whose dishonesty regarding his Nazi past triggered a necessary social discourse that has been given new significance by the political developments in Austria. Beckermann unfolds an inspiring history lesson, not without a touch of humour. The struggle for factual neutrality is quaking in the face of obvious lies. The film exposes a shameful episode in Austrian history and shows us a deep and gaping wound that won’t heal for a long time.
Patrick Holzapfel
Patrick Holzapfel
