A conversation with Manfred Neuwirth
by Gottfried Schlemmer

Your film ‘Erinnerungen an ein verlorenes Land’ (Reminiscenes of a lost land) reconstructs the history of the military training area Allentsteig. It is a film about a region. How would you define the term ‘regional film work’?

Regional films can only be made outside the centres. They are films that are made outside the prevailing metropolitan industrial way of thinking. Many films that I know and would categorise as regional films are films that also go back in history. On the one hand, with a nostalgic view, i.e. in the sense that one relives one's own history, and on the other hand, that the problems facing these regions are addressed. So to speak, the positively nostalgic view exists for me in the sense that it is a memory of one's own youth or childhood. And that is also what very often appeals to the emotions of the viewer.
Regional film culture is closely related to the fact that as a filmmaker you are anchored in a territory, i.e. not that I have to have grown up there, but that I take time to go there to really engage with a regional structure and slowly develop a story from it. It doesn't have to be a documentary. For me, it is just an important factor to be part of something. Above all, the preparation time is crucial, and that I incorporate my interest so as not to impose something on the whole thing. I have to try to absorb moods. That's the right approach for me. It would be wrong to define it as if a director could only make films where he grew up. It's about taking your own history into the region and still absorbing what's going on there.

In what way does such an attitude stand in contrast to the blood and soil cult of the Nazis, who spoke of the rootedness of people in a particular area?

My position is that when I make films regionally, I understand that there are people with such rootedness who interest me. I am, so to speak, the jumper between cultures. Of course, my interest also lies in experiencing something like this, namely that rootedness still exists at all. This is, of course, also a search for my own roots, for my own history, namely growing up in Lower Austria, studying in Vienna and thus experiencing the fascination of big city culture, but then at a certain point no longer being able to bear being in Vienna.
I therefore also felt fascinated by people who are still truly rooted to their regions. Each of us is engaged in this search. Home, visually realised, can be: certain wallpapers, houses that you remember, certain village structures, certain smells that you have experienced yourself. I believe that everyone is still searching for this today. The movement of 1968 always devalued everything that went in this direction; the focus was always on internationalism. That was also the case in the 70s, and the return to this only came, let's say, in the early 80s.
Everything that had to do with home was rejected. The return to this only happened 10 years later. My story was similar.

So I believe that rootedness must not become independent. Otherwise, those who come from outside would not be accepted, would they?

When I go to a region, I don't assume that the image of humanity there is shaped by a blood-and-soil ideology. I know that I am the stranger there. I try to have conversations and take in ideas. The English workshop models, for example, are more consistent, where filmmakers work in local media centres and specifically address the region's problems. That is a step further, and I am not there yet. I am still a stranger. For me it is important to go to the region and find a certain form of social contact that no longer exists in the city. I am not someone who works in a region and believes that I can contribute to more movement or cultural engagement there with my film work.

Doesn't anyone work regionally in Lower Austria?

Not to my knowledge. The approach was there 10 years ago, regional film work with the help of a media bus in Lower Austria. And when the project got off the ground, people hoped for the so-called self-activity of the people and that was the wrong approach. A media centre would have to be a kind of starting point, but staffed by filmmakers who are already actively involved with the region, so that people who want training can work with them.
This would also be a media-pedagogical approach, so that anyone who wants to could deal with their environment cinematically.

If you grow up in a certain landscape, then that will probably also play a role in regional filmmaking?

For me, that was also a nice experience. I shot with a friend on an alpine pasture that was nicely above the tree line, and I realised that this is not my landscape. I had real problems there, because I'm more the hilly type from the wine district. But when I find the point why it doesn't work, then it turns around again. It's really something foreign, and I'm dealing with it now, then I'll find the images again.

Isn't finding images also a form of rediscovering yourself?

Yes, for me it is remembering in every form. This remembering of the sources, which I cannot consciously reflect on, but there are images that I see, remembering the village structure where I grew up. This has to do with my own history. To find that has to do with intellectual analysis, but also with emotional ties. So that a friend said about ‘Memories of a Lost Country’: that's the Waldviertel, whoever watches the film recognises the flat emotionally, the wallpaper, the paintwork. That's how it is with my memory. It has nothing to do with specific landscapes. A few austere images can evoke these memories. And for me personally, it is this reflection that is also my concept of home.

Is it about a search?

Yes, it is. For me, making films is always a search.

Isn't regional film work also political work?

Yes, for me it definitely is. Of course I have to reflect on the problems, for example, the rural structures or environmental issues in my work. There is also a political interest behind every one of my films. Everyone has that. I don't believe a director who says he doesn't.

Political interest can also be seen in your film ‘Erinnerungen an ein verlorenes Land’ (Reminiscenes of a lost land). What was the initial idea?

The idea was based on a story that I only heard about three years ago. I was amazed that I, as a native of Lower Austria, had never heard of it. It was a shocking experience to learn that there is a large piece of land – the Allentsteig military training area – marked on the map that has no history at all. That was the first confrontation where I realised that the country has history, it has to do with the ‘Anschluss’ and thus with repressed history. That was the first idea. The rest came about through personal contacts. I got to know people who had been dealing with the subject for quite some time and who also worked in a cultural initiative. So the idea of making a film was not my own, but was suggested to me. And I always find that a good approach. I'm glad that you don't have to search for something yourself, but that you can be confronted with a topic and slowly dig into it. But the main starting point was surely this surprise, and the fact that you don't know anything about it and don't hear about it at school either.

Did you come across it while working on the film?

Actually, it was a coincidence. I was teaching a media course in the Waldviertel and that's where I met the people who told me about it.

And what happened after that?

A group of four formed out of these personal contacts. We made a first draft together, with each person bringing in their personal interests and ideas about what should be in the film. It was a rough concept. It was important that Friedrich Polleroß, an art historian at the University of Vienna, was involved. He came from the area, from Neupölla, and had been dealing with this problem for a long time and had already organised an exhibition. He was an absolute godsend for me, because he already knew a lot of people there. Without him, the conversations would certainly not have been possible in this form. Contacts that a filmmaker could only dream of: that even before the shooting began, there was a base of people that you need when you go to a place and want to film. Otherwise, I would have had to plan for this phase much longer. That was the starting point, where we said to ourselves, we'll start with the conversations and try to get the main direction out of these stories, namely what the people have experienced. So the approach was a bit more far-reaching than it became in the final film. But it also has to do with the fact that these stories have simply become so important to me. Then I went up there and just concentrated on the landscape. That is to say, I just drove around for two weeks, looking for settings, waiting for bad weather and similar things. There was another problem: would we even be able to film ‘indoors’? We were only able to enter the area to film twice. A landscape like that of the military training area is a bit difficult to reflect on as a whole, because parts of it are overgrown jungle. It is very difficult to present the problems with such a romantic area.
That's why we tried to use only very specific images, some electronically manipulated, and not images with lupines, because large parts of the military training area are not used for military purposes. So it was unclear for a long time how we could get a grip on the landscape, so to speak. We used them very sparingly and worked a bit with alienation. When we had already recorded fifteen conversations, it became clear to me that it would have to be mainly about these people's memories, that the decisive thing would have to be there. That I shouldn't make any moral judgements and impose a political statement on the whole thing.
I left out any commentary, including essayistic commentary, and only made very simple running titles to explain the story. This was also the reason for the decision not to insert a professional commentary in order not to weight the narratives differently. Another problem was to find the right rhythm. We often recorded with the people for 4-5 hours. There was hardly any intervention in the conversations, the people could really tell their stories at length. Condensing that was a long process, which meant that I had to work very intensively with the texts to get them to fit together both in terms of content and emotionally.
This led to the fact that we then concentrated on 10 people and tried to have them tell their stories in different stages, which the film describes. That was the bridge to get the different people's narratives about the historical events into the film. Of course, we had lucky breaks, such as a woman who is still alive and who also speaks in a special dialect that hardly exists anymore. So, that is what I understand as memory.

You often say ‘we.’ Who else was there?

Besides Fritz Polleroß, there was Janos Karas, a sociologist who had already conducted sociological studies in the Waldviertel. Furthermore, Wolfgang Müller-Funk, a radio man who makes cultural and scientific programmes and publishes books, a Germanist and organiser of the Waldviertel Academy. This planned a symposium on the subject of ‘military training areas’, on their history and also on their effects to this day. And so the idea was born to show the film material. However, the cinematic design was left entirely to me.

Was there a script or something similar?

No, there was a treatment and we collected both written and pictorial material. I was able to draw on a great many photos, which were then included in the film as historical photos. It's always important to have a treatment, a draft that offers a starting point from which you can develop something further during the filming. It's the principle of openness, going to a region and then developing something from a topic. And if I look at the treatment now, only 20% of it has been realised. At the beginning it was a bit excessive, you cross out and then minimise until you get a clear film.

Nevertheless, I would like to ask again. You had a treatment, which was a certain point of reference for how to proceed. Then you collected material. How did you put that into relation? Was this phase of work also set down in writing?

Transcripts of all the conversations were made immediately. Later, I then weighed up where to ask other people for more information. We wanted to include the story of Julius Scheidl, who died in the concentration camp. He was someone who didn't engage in any obvious resistance, but because he was affected by the resettlement, he was always grumbling and was therefore ‘nuked’. At the time, that was enough to end up in a concentration camp.

This story has become somewhat intangible. We noticed that there were a lot of rumours going around and we realised that we wouldn't be able to get a grip on them on film. We talked to the daughter and the son again and we knew that we now had to ask them very specific and pointed questions about this story. During the interviews, we asked the question again from a different angle and already listened to how we would need it in the film. Not that the people were interrupted, but they were asked from different angles. We tried to somehow bring in the thread of the plot. That was one structure. A second one emerged after the first round of interviews: Nazis, displacement 38-42, a history of resistance, so that one also knows that not everyone just ‘ran away’, but that there were forms of individual resistance, then the period of Soviet occupation and, furthermore, the republic and the moral issue of what the republic did with the legacy of the Nazis. From this point of view, it was clear to us: in order to transport the story, we have to structure it according to the historical epochs. 7000 people were displaced there and this fact cannot be generalised with a commentary above it, but one must make it understandable that it is about individual stories. In this sense, my film is much more of an open work of art. It should trigger something.

For me, the story defies a principal representation in film, I can only say that it is being discussed. After the film was shown, it was often said that the problems in the Waldviertel are now quite different, and then it was discussed; but that's fine with me too. If there is discussion about how we are doing now, and that this military training area is also an economic problem, then something has already been achieved. It is not the most important thing to cling to history, but to understand the context. There were often people there who appeared in the film and of course those were the best discussions, because they also added what they still lacked because we had to cut them short. And it was also a good experience that the young people reacted to these ‘contemporary witnesses’ and asked, ‘What was it like?’

And your film doesn't want to codify, but – one could almost say – continue? So the film should be consumed in the minds of the audience and thus lead to new results. Is that right?

That was also the main point of critical comments, why we don't offer more comprehensive information or ‘just tell us historical truths’.
And I reply that I can only give what I found there, namely the memories of these people: Furthermore, that I dealt with the topic and condensed it, they should react to it, and then we should try to discuss it.
It is never my intention to present historical truth. There are certainly glorifying stories in the film, but I have no other intention. I take the stories as they are; I never claim, not even in the cinematic form of presentation, that the stories are true and objective. Rather, I present so and so many side by side and then I expect the reaction of the audience.

One final question: do you have any plans to make a film in or about Lower Austria in the near future?

It's still difficult to describe because I'm only in the initial phase, but it's something along the lines of ‘audiovisual memory of a country’. One idea, for example, would be to collect amateur film material, to have time to take pictures in certain regions that are comparable to historical recordings, to do archive work and professional image material. That would be a starting point that is on my mind, and it could happen in collaboration with a few people. But I can't say anything more than that because it's still just an idea. It is based to some extent on the experiences we had with ‘Memories of a Lost Country’, although it is still open in which regions that should be, but in any case a home examination.

In:
The Region and the Centre
A discussion with Gottfried Schlemmer about the concept of homeland in film.
in: Medium Film 1990- Lauf.Bild.Buch.Niederösterreich, Vienna 1990