Trust in the Power of the Optical. The Image Maker

Manfred Neuwirth and his films

In a conversation with Walter Hiller, Manfred Neuwirth said that he often withdraws from the linguistic level and tends to trust in the power of the optical. The conversation partners could, for example, take five pictures with the camera, show them to each other and thus communicate with each other non-verbally.

I will describe five images from Manfred Neuwirth's films.

1. From Asuma (1982): Jean is trying to read a text in the wind on a meadow, and the sheet of paper keeps flying flat into his face. ‘The sheet of paper is flying,’ he says – concrete poetry in word and image.
2. From Wossea Mtotom (1983/84): Three young men are playing cards, they are sitting in a house entrance, laying out their cards on an upturned box. A young woman is sitting on the doorstep watching them and thinking about the summer.
3. From Memories of a Lost Country (1988), the old photos or perhaps this long rainy drive through the Waldviertel. I would also like to select sound images from this film, the drawn-out accordion sounds.
4. From On Life Love Dying - Experiences with AIDS (1992/93), of course, the intermediate views, the blurred window crossbar.
5. From The End of the Gang of Four (1993), the Super-8 shot around which the experimental video is constructed: Chinese children run up, bend down, pick up something and throw it against a screen on which the ‘Gang of Four’ is drawn in a caricature at a height suitable for children.

Manfred Neuwirth works with the medium of video. This means certain attributions are fixed. By his own definition, he would classify himself as belonging to the second generation of documentary work with video in Austria, to those groups that in the mid-1970s wanted to create a ‘counter-public’ to the established mass media. The criteria and premises of this documentary work are well known: Predominantly, the ‘affected’ have their say, and the filmmakers are usually available from the sidelines to address the specific issues. They are ‘social workers in media work’ – as Manfred Neuwirth retrospectively calls it.

This way of working is restrictive. Manfred Neuwirth does not allow himself to be restricted. Through consistency and precise work, he has emancipated himself over the years from the narrowly defined socially committed work with the medium. If it is argued that documentary film is moving closer to experimental film because, in terms of genre, they operate in a similarly reflective way with regard to the media (e.g. the film team's self-image belongs to the obligatory repertoire of images) (Christa Blümlinger), then Lampalzer, Deutsch and Neuwirth have already provided interesting experimental variants with their two films about the initiative for the disabled in Luxembourg. The filmmakers and those filmed operate in various functions in front of and behind the camera; functions and classifications become mixed.

Not only the reality found is the lovingly observed subject of the films, but also the reality that is constantly being changed by the activity of filmmaking.

This quality of crossing boundaries (here we can already see an affinity to video art and installations) is a structural stroke of luck for the films: they show the utopia of changing the sensual world through artistic activities. The people affected, the disabled, are at the same time autonomous actors when it comes to their artistic products; they are vulnerable, sick, when it comes to containing their irritations, dialogue partners, communicators, collaborators. These two films actually represented a passionate rejection of the so-called ‘pamphlet films’ (Ruth Beckermann), the relatively formless agitprop films. Neuwirth is, above all, a producer of images, constantly searching for images that convey his content. He has remained loyal to the medium of video and has continually developed new visual strategies in this medium. The images are never merely illustrative. They always come from nowhere in particular, so that a period of reflection remains between what is seen and a hasty categorisation.

He was therefore ‘there from the beginning’: in the history of his life and work, he embodies an aspect of Austrian media history with the stages that belong to the typical curriculum vitae of an independent video worker in Vienna: contact with the ‘Arena movement’, producing a media counterpoint with the ‘Volks stöhnenden Knochenschau’, co-founder of the Medienzentrum (later Medienwerkstatt) and from that point on continuously involved in the medium in many functions with increasing professionalisation. As with other filmmakers, the development subsequently tended to move away from strict documentary work to projects that leave more room for the subjective, the meditative and formal rigour.

Neuwirth's search for the right images has the spiritual dimension of a general life plan. He trusts his images, you can tell. They are simple – in a transparent, uncompromising sense – they step back between statement and sensual perception, transporting the filmmaker's attitude in a subcutaneous, unpretentious way. In Memories of a Lost Country, the interviewees quite obviously trust the filmmakers. They speak deliberately and with concentration, searching for the right words, hesitating. This is interpreted undogmatically and equally. General, farmer's wife, high-ranking official, they all make their communicative contribution equally. Of course, there are no interpretations from the off.

The filmmaker also trusts his audience. ‘How stupid do they think the audience are with their schoolmasterly attitude when they think that one should not show the profession of a neo-Nazi or this film about Leni Riefenstahl, The Power of Images?’ Neuwirth has something against schoolmarmishness. And yet the genre in which he frequently works is susceptible to schoolmarmishness. He avoids it with aplomb because he shows, offers material and does not explain. The disabled and non-disabled are included with the same concentration or selective casualness. There is no zooming in on slight movement irritations or incipient conspicuous behaviour. One has the impression that the camera was a natural part of their living together, like the tools with which the art objects were produced. It must have been a wonderful summer! And something of the scent of this summer of intense activity, of shared artistic practice, of the production of communication, is transported in the images of the film.

Positive, concentrated, calm, honest. With these attributes, one could also categorically place an artist in the less attractive corner of the striving, the well-meaning, the good. It is generally strange that in documentary works, reference is always made to the basic ethical position, while this does not seem to play such a large role in the producers of images in the fictional area. Precisely because Neuwirth avoids the punch line, the denunciation, the hidden camera, the formal radical decisions, such as these abstract views in the AIDS film, are almost explosions, moments of great visual sensuality. Not virtuoso flickering, but abstraction as a formal necessity and caesura. Neuwirth operated the camera in a film about Tibet. (Jürg Neuenschwander Shigatse, 1988/89.) One often recognises his images: the landscape is overwhelming, but in such a way that it leaves the people their dimensions, life on the streets is shown so intimately that one would like to plunge right into it. But otherwise the film is the opposite of Manfred Neuwirth's own documentary works in its conception. The off-screen commentary provides interpretations and value judgements, it does not really explain, and it presents what is presumably original only as something exotic, without explaining it in more detail or leaving it as something foreign.

Neuwirth's films work differently. The camera always seems to find just the right distance to the people in front of it. There is room for breathing in the image, for freedom of movement, but in the concentration of the framing. Of course there is no commentary; the viewer can trust the images. In order to do justice to Neuwirth's working method, one must not forget – and it is often forgotten – that he develops experimental videos and media installations parallel to his long documentary works. He is an explorer of images. He is by no means confined to the narrower framework of social and socially committed media work. The works are described here in order to emphasise their equal importance alongside the documentary work.

Heilende Schläge (1985): The collaboration with the experimental music group 8 oder 9 began with the project for the disabled. The video was made in an attic, with 8 oder 9 singing eight of their songs. Curd Duca often provided the music for Neuwirth's projects in the future, for example for Erinnerungen an ein verlorenes Land or for the abstract gaze sequences in the film about Aids.

The race is almost run (1985) was an installation work with a toy train and two monitors on which someone walked, larger than life in relation to the toy train. You could determine the right-left direction of movement on the monitors with a transformer.

The installation Der Pilot (1987) is based on a correspondence between Günther Anders and Claude Robert Eatherly, the pilot who released the bomb on Hiroshima. Eatherly later became involved in the anti-nuclear movement and was subsequently institutionalised. The pilot was an installation with the sound of bombers, target images on monitors, as they were also used in the Gulf War, and lines of text from the correspondence. Four loudspeakers, three monitors and a beam projection. The monitors were lying on the floor with the screen facing upwards; fighter bombers were stuck on the screen, creating abstract images.

Collected Views (1990/91, with Gerda Lampalzer): the various sequences of city observations were edited in endless loops and shown on eight monitors, with each monitor showing the sequences of one city. Every 30 seconds, an image was shown for half a second. The locations include not only exotic street scenes, but also the port of Hamburg or the square in front of Café Hummel in Vienna. These are places where Neuwirth can immerse herself in the scenery in peace. The audio pieces for headphones that were created in Tibet (Barkhor round) are also related to this kind of concentration. You place yourself in a street situation and allow yourself to be drawn into the various acoustic stimuli as if it were a composition.

This two- or multi-pronged approach in the video work is symptomatic and also allows a formal structural approach to the documentaries. I remember with a certain trepidation the discussions of the early eighties, when committed documentaries could not also be analysed in film-specific terms, because at the first such approach someone from the audience or from the podium would have demanded that the wage negotiations of the documented company be made the subject of the discussion instead. It seemed as if it would be difficult to produce exciting, formally stimulating documentaries in Austria and still argue and act in a political and socio-critical way. Now one might expect Manfred Neuwirth to take on other topics that are ideal for a contemporary documentary project: the new right-wing radicals, Europe, xenophobia, etc. But he does not sample topics according to their current attractiveness. Mostly, the subjects are brought to him. I think that he then reflects at length on whether it fits: into his life plan – that's the first thing – and then with what he generally wants to express and achieve with his films.

Perhaps one should not wish him a more prominent position in the Austrian film scene, so that he can continue to work on his long-term projects in peace and concentration, commuting between Tibet and Austria. However, for films of this quality, one would expect a more visible place in the cinema-television media landscape.

Conversation with Manfred Neuwirth

We are back to the initial keywords. What were your first experiences with film and video?

When I was 15, I shot my first 30-minute feature film (Super 8 with added sound). I was the author, director, cameraman and main actor. It was about a symbol, a blue triangle, which the main character can no longer escape, a massive propaganda message for a totalitarian system. At the end, you see people (my first crowd scene with 15 people) who all have this symbol on their backs, and the hero is infected too. There was also a feature film project at school in Berndorf, which was an unexpected sense of freedom, a happy experience: I was able to discover a new strength in artistic work. My first film impressions came from television. That's where I discovered Bunuel for myself. I wanted to see everything he had made. Even today I sometimes find notes on which I have written down keywords from his films. For example, that Bunuel follows every movement of the body with a corresponding camera movement. At the time, I was more interested in fiction films; documentary films were not as important to me yet.

Then Vienna: I studied economics, statistics, but all rather half-heartedly, computer science, then journalism, but that was not particularly practical either. History. At that time there was this much-cited spirit of optimism. Groups and initiatives were formed that were integrated into various social movements: anti-nuclear, gay groups, etc. They walked around with a ‘Portapak’ - that was the first mobile video recording unit - and believed in the direct applicability of the new medium of video for political work. The Graz Media Initiative, for example, was particularly active. Sooner or later, many of these projects failed because it was still impossible to finance the further processing of the material. In Vienna, there was only one editing suite at the architects' university. This led to the pragmatic idea of creating sensible user structures. Thirteen video groups joined together to form an umbrella organisation. That was a start.

At that time, it was less about producing one's own work and more about a comprehensive political practice that also used the media. Yes, this tiresome form-content problem arose in this kind of media work. Of course, for us the focus was exclusively on the content; the crucial thing was to do something at all, there were hardly any aesthetic considerations. We were nothing more than social workers for media use. At that time, the various initiatives developed simultaneously as an effect of the Arena movement: Medienwerkstatt, at that time still Medienzentrum, Filmladen, Falter.

The work at the Medienzentrum, for example, was something of a step backwards from film work. There was now this combative attitude: video versus film; video as a medium for direct documentary work with a focus on political content, but above all no engagement with formal issues. Film-specific questions that had been worked on up to that point became irrelevant. Despite this direct practical relevance, everything became very top-heavy. Our role models were Dziga Vertov's Kino Pravda, the factography à la Tretyakov. You always work with the same people on your projects over the years. There are long-standing production contexts that work. Gerda Lampalzer and I have the same ideas, which is why we keep doing projects together. The work also took place in a larger life context. We worked and lived together. Ferdinand Stahl was there from the beginning; he had a long-term project at the time that accompanied the self-administration in the Amerlinghaus. Gerda Lampalzer came to us very soon through this project, then Ilse Gassinger and not much later Anna Steininger. Even if the media workshop no longer functions so intensively as a collective and as a context for life, intensive working contexts continue to exist.

Does the work in the media workshop tie up your energies to such an extent that you have less time to produce your own work? The intervals between your major documentary projects are quite long.

I need time for my films. For example, we worked on the film about AIDS for over two years. I do preliminary research, talk to many people, write a script. That is a very concentrated, thoroughly planned process. After the first script, the film work begins. I need freedom. I film, then I write again. Then comes the revision phase. The interviews for the AIDS film ultimately took place over a period of one and a half years. The interviews that were actually used were then recorded during an intensive shooting session that lasted several hours. I had about five times as much material before I came to this rather radical, strict approach.

I can take on a project of this size every two years, but no more. If I were to include all the commissioned productions in my filmography, it would be much longer. I mainly work in the educational and social sector on documentaries, as a cameraman or director. I am currently putting together a Multimedia Info Terminal for an organisation for the disabled. This is a useful and meaningful application of an interactive system: parents and relatives of potential users of such institutions can inform themselves about the various offers: What do the rooms look like, the workshops etc.? It will be an interactive image disc. Or: I made a twelve-hour educational film about the Feldenkrais method for the training of therapists. Fortunately, I can choose the topics, I don't have to do everything.

In your documentary films, only the ‘good guys’ appear; there are no controversies, no provocative counter-opinions. I can only work with people with whom I get along. I don't use this provocative interview technique in which someone is quasi-opened up, in which the ‘bad guy’ exposes himself. I don't want to work with such people either. I want to work in an environment that is my own living environment and that has positive connotations for me.

How did the film ‘Vom Leben Lieben Sterben - Erfahrungen mit Aids’ come about?

Walter Hiller lost a good friend to AIDS. He asked me if we couldn't do something on this topic. At first I didn't want anything to do with it, I didn't want to deal with such a distressing topic. Then we got to know Ernst, who had lost his partner, as a first contact. I realised with him that one can also deal with the disease in a positive way. That was a good experience. In the end, I was tempted to deal with a topic that is only treated sensationally in a positive way, to deal with people who deal with the issue directly in their lives. We were interested in the helpers, the ‘buddies’ from the AIDS service organisation, the volunteer helpers, and also the doctors and nurses from the professional side. But we didn't use these conversations in the end. They were too careful, they argued politically, and these are all very fragile structures. They didn't talk about how they as persons react to the illness, only about the institutional context. I was concerned with the general question: how does the environment deal with the illness?

But you also have an HIV positive person, a sick person, in the film.

Yes, he died four months after the shooting. Actually, we didn't want to present anyone who was ill in the film, only people who were indirectly involved with the illness through their way of life. There was a danger that it would serve voyeuristic needs: here you are, look at him, this is what someone who has the disease looks like. But Walter had already founded an AIDS initiative group in prison, and we still wanted him in the film because he could talk about his commitment to those affected.

Can we talk about the formal aspects of the film? How were structural decisions made, for example, how did the framing come about?

The framing resulted from the way we conducted the interviews. Hands, for example, were not so important to me. I looked at how I could best concentrate the field of force. The focus was on the interview situation. The angles should be clear, the camera centred, and there should be a precise determination of the shot size in each case. It was important to me: I don't want to follow up, not pan the camera, not zoom in on the face when a special emotional situation arises. So I have to look at people beforehand to see how they move, and then the shot size is defined. The form of the framing should be strictly adhered to throughout the entire conversation. The black frames between the conversation parts are the same length, only before the chapter headings, these three rather abstract views, are longer. These views are each a very slow fade of natural structures, tree bark, etc., layered ten times over, which then results in an organic, delicate network, patterns that blur slightly before the eye. These are points of focus. This should signal to the viewer that nothing is coming, the gaze only goes as far as this window frame. Now the viewer has to deal with themselves. This is a strong point of intersection. My own gaze is now the subject. I can now try to incorporate what I have seen into my cognitive structures. In a non-metaphorical way, the slow change of perspective is shown, a gradual shift. My perspective also changed slowly during the film work. That would not have happened if I had shot the film in ten weeks. That is a crucial formal step. The key experience for me in this production was that one can learn to see AIDS differently.

Is this an educational, pedagogical approach?

No, not at all. I first want to experience how I behave, and that's what I show. The change must first take place within me; I can only work from my own life, and something must change here, something must be set in motion. The film is a direct translation of the experience of this change. I can offer D35, I can show that. For me, education is too closely associated with the idea of this old media work and therefore has negative connotations. I have to draw from my own life, that's the only way I make films. I live, and only then are topics for films brought to me, they come to me. I don't look for topics for films so that I can live. But even if the projects are brought to you, there are surely topics that interest you to a greater or lesser extent. My real topic is always the crossing of boundaries in every form. I am particularly interested in mixed forms in the media, the different technologies, experimental film - what is on the brink. I am currently working in Tibet. I spend about two to three months ‘up there’ every year. Various projects have emerged from my experiences there:
The audio pieces Barkhor round and the Tibetan Diary. These are images from the everyday world in a video compilation. I work with time dilation. One shot in slow motion flows smoothly into the next. Incidentally, the four Tibetan words for ‘television set’ are: ‘form,’ ‘see,’ ‘transmit’ and ‘through atmosphere.’ This work was shown in the depot in Vienna in the summer of 1995.
After Jürg Neuenschwander's film Shigatse, in which I worked as a cameraman, the question that came up most often in discussions was: What exactly is Tibetan medicine? And that's what I want to work on. The situation in Tibet is becoming increasingly difficult for the Tibetans. There are already 300,000 Chinese in Lhasa and only 80,000 Tibetans. There has been a certain liberalisation in the practice of religion, but otherwise the situation has tended to deteriorate. People go to prison for trivial reasons. There were these seven nuns who showed the Tibetan flag at a demonstration and were sentenced to 15 years in prison. It is particularly incomprehensible when you see how, during the absurd ban on demonstrations on the occasion of Li Peng's visit to Vienna, police officers literally chase two Tibetan women who are just carrying a sign with a Tibetan inscription.
So far, my work there is in the preliminary stages, research, material search. I don't yet know how it will continue. If I officially pursue the project with filming permits, it will be expensive and difficult to finance. So far, I have been working with HI-8, which is great for those unexpected moments that are so exciting that you will use them at some point. For example, there was a scene of a long march by people up a mountain; they were on their way to collect medicinal herbs. Then there was a situation with singing nuns, a picnic, which I definitely want to use. I am filming in Tibet at a school in the countryside where traditional medicine is taught. Contacts have been made there. The working title of the film is Stories of the Medicine Tree. Tibetans convey their ideas and knowledge in the form of stories. The tree, with its trunk, branches and finest twigs, is a visualisation of the various medical schools. I would like to incorporate this structural principle into my film. At the moment I am working on the script.

How do you see your position within Austrian film?

Video as a medium doesn't exist in the public eye. Only the works that are shown in cinemas have been noticed at all. I'm more likely to be categorised as a documentary filmmaker, but that's only partially true. But I can't be pigeonholed in the art scene either, where I also operate. I want to try everything consistently. Asuma (the first film about the project for the disabled in Luxembourg) was never shown on television here. We thought that when the film won a television award in Belgium, Austrian television might also be interested. We were wrong.
As is well known, there is no place for documentaries. ‘Anything over 45 minutes is boring,’ ORF department head Alfred Payrleitner is supposed to have said. The films have been shown on French, Belgian and German television. There is no continuous interest in such works on ORF, so it has not been possible to develop a collaboration. The ‘Kunststücke’ series is an exception. ‘Vom Leben Lieben Sterben’ and other documentaries have been shown in this programme. But nevertheless, working with video is the mode of production that is most adequate for me. I determine my own production conditions. I am the producer, cameraman and director. I control the production. But in the public channels, one is declassified by producing with video. Video art does not exist for a broader public at all. And the mixture that I embody: documentary video works and artistic installations, they hardly exist and can hardly be integrated into the public response. But not being tied to a particular category is an opportunity: as an author who works with media, I have to and want to try out and take advantage of all the possibilities.
Back to documentary work: one problem is that you only film situations in which the camera is present, so there is never a reality without this form of staging. Especially in our films with the disabled, the presence of the camera was not an issue. It doesn't matter to them that someone is filming. You are accepted as you are, whether you have a camera on your shoulder or not. Except in the self-dramatisation, but then it was planned that way. In general, I have found that time is a crucial factor. If you take a long time, then at some point the camera becomes invisible: everyone behaves relatively normally, things happen without the camera interfering, without being provoked by the camera. We showed the film at many events and discussed it, and it was interesting because it worked as a mirror of how people interact with the disabled. One attitude was something like: ‘This doesn't exist, it can't be as relaxed and fun as you're making it out to be, show something critical too’. That was the social workers; for them it was provocative. From the more political side came the reproach: ‘You can't show how pleasant life can potentially be for this minority; that's unacceptable in view of the political conditions and exclusions.’

But there is definitely a negative scene in the film, the biting scene, where the young poet Jean, of all people, who attracts so much sympathy, goes crazy.

Yes, we watched this scene in slow motion many times, and it became more and more problematic for us. There was something animalistic about his behaviour, his movements, the sounds he made. We were unsure whether showing him like this was denigrating. But I think it's extremely important that the scene is in the film now. This also means that you let people have their illness, that you don't want to create the impression of harmony, that everything is okay.
Incidentally, all the black and white parts in the film were shot by Jean, he moved around with the camera as a matter of course. These different ways of perceiving things were very exciting for us. Just the scene in which he films for the first time and doesn't take the cap off: He sees nothing, then he removes the cap and sees something, but immediately he puts the cap back on because he is more concerned with this seeing and not seeing.
At the time, I was interested in the particular life situation. That was one of the most intense times of my life; it is becoming increasingly difficult to find such a context for living and working. But I am always looking for exactly such a situation. If a film comes out of it, that's good, but I can't think primarily in terms of film marketing strategies. It's always about issues of life context first.

Isn't the Medienwerkstatt a bit worn out in the changed media and political landscape, if not at an end?

Not at all. The independent experimental video scene is over. The political power of this kind of media work no longer exists. The young video artists are now trying out everything that is possible in computer art. The ‘Video Edition Austria’, which was put together by the Medienwerkstatt, provides a comprehensive, almost historical overview of the period of the independent video scene.
The fact is that the independent video scene in the sense of a counter-strategy to television has more or less dissolved. It is also almost ironic that a member of a particularly radical video group in Freiburg, for example, has now received an Oscar. They would never have dreamed of working for television in the past. But the Medienwerkstatt continues to be an important centre for independent productions in the areas of video, film and multimedia. There is a close connection with LOOP TV-Video-Film Produktion: the professional recording equipment is the domain of the Loop GesmbH and post-production, editing, etc. is the responsibility of the Medienwerkstatt.

Do you also work in the multimedia area?

I have just completed a production called Bildermacher (Image-maker). It is about image technologies. A key experience for me was the film Der Riese (The Giant) by Michael Klier, which uses images from surveillance cameras. I ask myself: What do the various image machines look like 15 years later? There are the most diverse image productions, you can insert cameras into the body, the surgeon becomes a cameraman, or ultrasound or satellite images. In the last decade, the general production of images has increased enormously. The social interpretation is largely based on the production of images. I am working on a collection of images. On a touch screen, there are 16 different image machines to see. For example, you can select the keyword ‘ultrasound’, a doctor gives a short statement about the method, then you see what the ultrasound images look like, and finally the machine itself. There is also a field for a short additional text, a kind of side note. I have always been fascinated by the realm of image-producing machines. My father used to have the latest cameras and devices lying around at home. I was very interested in them even back then.

Now questions arise for me: How do the people involved relate to the images? But also the other way around: What do the images mean to people?

There are some incredible things: for example, this particular type of sports hypnosis. First, there is an activation through a certain type of autogenic training, then images and sounds of scenes of jubilation and enthusiasm are coupled with it. The psychic stimulation is then activated before the actual competition only by the motor movements. This method is also used in astronaut training to broaden the horizon of experience in the space capsule. Images are produced by motor skills. This is a central example of what can happen with images. A mixture of fiction and non-fiction develops, which interests me. I also have a producer of images from specialists who are interested in parapsychological phenomena. He points his camera at the television and records the endless feedback. He then analyses the individual images of the feedback and suddenly recognises faces, etc. A similar phenomenon occurs with the tape voices, where those in the know can hear answers to specific questions in the background noise. I will definitely be working more on such image productions in the next few years. I make the videos myself and work with someone who stores them in a system interactively. Since I no longer have this ultimate creative will, the interactive approach seems extremely important to me: I offer something. The final direction or the image combination possibilities are left to the viewer.

Do you see yourself as a politically active author/artist?

I prefer to operate in society in a less educational and more subversive way. In other words, I don't work so much on a direct socio-critical, political level, but rather one step higher. In other societies, you may know exactly where the enemy is, so you can act more directly. Here in Austria, a subversive social approach is hardly to be found. But this approach can be realised in work, and it should be fun.
Of course, in our social climate, there are many topics that could be addressed. But current political critical analyses are not in demand. In Austria, people avoid confrontation, or at least they don't seek it out. There is no general discussion about social issues. Of course, the question also remains as to whether the entrenched funding structures do not tend to prevent such debates. For example, there is no real discussion about the issue of AIDS. It is treated in headlines: ‘Another 60% increase in AIDS cases’. No one can do anything with that. There are no genuinely serious counter-positions in the public discussion. The film about the military training area was perhaps such a subversive work. A film that had an effect in the region. And it was shown in cinemas in Vienna for six weeks.

Now comes the obligatory checking out of role models. You've already mentioned Bunuel. I know that you appreciate Bresson, who also works in a documentary fashion in a radical way. Which other documentary filmmakers are role models for you?

Of course Chris Marker is a great role model. Not only Sans Soleil, but especially the film about the four different revolutionary movements: Vietnam, Cuba, Prague, France. Marker combines the sum of his experiences in his films.
Johan van der Keuken is also important to me. He embodies the principle of the auteur filmmaker. His film about the brass bands is sensational. How did he shoot it? Edit it? It's done with such precision, it's incredible. Van der Keuken also has this slightly pedagogical air, but perhaps that's more acceptable in the more cosmopolitan, liberal Dutch context.

Birgit Flos