Ulrich Seidl

Talking Heads

Wednesday 30 October 2013

in conversation with Jean Perret,
Head of the Cinema/Cinema du réel faculty
HEAD – Genève, Boulevard James-Fazy 15, auditorium

Ulrich Seidl, a sixty-one-year-old Austrian filmmaker who over the past thirty-three years has produced nearly twenty films that have helped to blur the academic boundaries of fiction and documentary. These include Good News: von Kolporteuren, toten Hunden und anderen Wienern (‘Good news: on hawkers, dead dogs and other Viennese’, 1990), which portrays a city and its ordinary people with an acuteness that challenges any attempt at consensual benevolence, and Paradise: Love / Faith / Hope (2012-2013), a trilogy that sheds a pitiless light on the desires that haunt characters in Austrian daily life.

Other films by Seidl are milestones in contemporary cinema output in their way of inventing a radical realism that contrasts starkly with the propriety of so much mainstream cinema. Amours animales (1995), Models (1999), Dog days (2001) and Import/Export (2006) display all the rigour of an aesthetic that underpins true stories and the power of productions that restore to reality its most stuffy features. This is spectacular cinema based on social anthropology, with obstinate descriptions of material life and collective consciousnesses, embodied by unusually believable characters.

Some wary observers have dismissed the filmmaker’s lucidity as appallingly nightmarish. Using excerpts from films to examine his working methods (Seidl’s use of non-professional actors!), aesthetics (Seidl’s framing!) and the ethics of his world view and his humanity (Seidl’s lucidity!), we hope to shed light on his scandalous art, which is of value not only in but, without the slightest doubt, beyond Austria.

A love-hate relationship with Austria? Misanthropy? We will see how Ulrich Seidl expresses the estrangement from their country that has typified so many generations of Austrian artists (including, of course, Thomas Bernhardt), and why he focuses on his characters in ways that bring out their buried, touching, solitary humanity.

Jean Perret

Geneva International Film Festival,1 October to 7 November 2013

HEAD Geneva is pleased to be associated with a number of captivating events from the Geneva International Film Festival, which will take place from 31 October to 7 November, including a major retrospective of the prestigious collection Cinéastes de notre temps (‘Filmmakers of our time’). Over a period of three years André S. Labarthe and Janine Bazin’s hundred and five portraits of filmmakers will be screened in their entirety for the first time in Switzerland. Labarthe will attend the festival in person and will present two new works. HEAD Geneva will also hold a prestigious round table on Tuesday 5 November.

Friday 1 November at 6 p.m.: Meeting with André S. Labarthe, moderated by Cyril Neyrat, teacher at the Cinema faculty.

Tuesday 5 November at 6 p.m.: Round table on the theme ‘Filming filmmakers: modesty, mimesis and manipulation’, with Gabe Klinger (who recently won the best documentary award at the Venice Film Festival), Sébastien Juy (who will present the world première of the latest film from the collection on Chris Marker and the Medvedkin groups) and Guy Girard (who has produced a fascinating portrait of Aki Kaurismäki and André Labarthe). The round table will be moderated by Jean Perret, head of the Cinema/Cinema of the Real faculty.

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