It’s been a rocky year for Ulrich Seidl. As far back as last February, Rimini was winning over critics at the Berlinale (us included) with its bleak beauty and frankly stunning central turn from Michel Thomas as the washed-up troubadour Richie Bravo. The director’s follow-up, titled Sparta and focusing on Bravo’s brother, was selected to open at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. A week before its premiere, allegations against Seidl emerged from an article published in Der Spiegel. In Sparta, Bravo’s brother (a pedophile played brilliantly by Georg Friedrich) travels to Romania and opens a judo school for young boys. The article alleged, amongst other things, that the child actors in Sparta had not been sufficiently protected on set and that their families had not been made aware of the film’s themes.
Seidl denied any wrongdoing; TIFF pulled the film the morning it was due to premiere.
Seidl denied any wrongdoing; TIFF pulled the film the morning it was due to premiere.
- 4/6/2023
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
Ulrich Seidl on Rimini: “I had images in my head of fog, of empty beaches, closed bars and restaurants, and hotels. All of this wrapped in a beautiful wintry sentimentality and loneliness.”
About a day as beautiful as today that should never fade away sings a row of inhabitants in an Austrian nursing home, holding on to their walkers for dear life. So begins Ulrich Seidl’s heartbreaking Rimini (72nd Berlin International Film Festival), co-written with Veronika Franz (The Lodge and Goodnight Mommy with Severin Fiala), shot by Wolfgang Thaler (Maria Schrader’s Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe), with costumes by Tanja Hausner. Rimini is as close to a musical as the director will probably ever get, conjuring up an eternal return of suffering, memories, and curated forgetting.
Ulrich Seidl with Anne-Katrin Titze on costume designer Tanja Hausner: “We first look into the closets of the performer.”
Seidl exposes in...
About a day as beautiful as today that should never fade away sings a row of inhabitants in an Austrian nursing home, holding on to their walkers for dear life. So begins Ulrich Seidl’s heartbreaking Rimini (72nd Berlin International Film Festival), co-written with Veronika Franz (The Lodge and Goodnight Mommy with Severin Fiala), shot by Wolfgang Thaler (Maria Schrader’s Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe), with costumes by Tanja Hausner. Rimini is as close to a musical as the director will probably ever get, conjuring up an eternal return of suffering, memories, and curated forgetting.
Ulrich Seidl with Anne-Katrin Titze on costume designer Tanja Hausner: “We first look into the closets of the performer.”
Seidl exposes in...
- 3/17/2023
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Ulrich Seidl is a director of curiosities, of shabby characters, pursued with an uncompromising and sometimes unfashionable gaze. Yet Sparta arrives in competition at the San Sebastian film festival at the head of considerable controversy not from its disturbing themes of pedophilia, but from incidents off-screen.
The Spanish event debuts the movie after the Toronto film festival scrapped its world premiere at the last minute in the fallout of allegations made in Germany’s Der Spiegel. The weekly magazine’s lengthy investigation said Seidl didn’t tell the underage cast and their guardians of the story’s themes and that he underprepared his mainly non-professional performers of the film’s nudity, alcoholism, and violence. Seidl denies the accusations, but canceled his appearance and the accompanying press conference in the Basque Country to support the film.
As to the charges against Sparta, on screen there is adult nudity in the space...
The Spanish event debuts the movie after the Toronto film festival scrapped its world premiere at the last minute in the fallout of allegations made in Germany’s Der Spiegel. The weekly magazine’s lengthy investigation said Seidl didn’t tell the underage cast and their guardians of the story’s themes and that he underprepared his mainly non-professional performers of the film’s nudity, alcoholism, and violence. Seidl denies the accusations, but canceled his appearance and the accompanying press conference in the Basque Country to support the film.
As to the charges against Sparta, on screen there is adult nudity in the space...
- 9/20/2022
- by Ed Frankl
- The Film Stage
Anyone seeking a peek into Ulrich Seidl’s worldview–perhaps his soul–could do worse than Rimini, his first film since Safari in 2016 and first narrative feature in almost a decade. It swells with Seidl ephemera: hunting trophies, Austrian basements, and lovelorn holiday-makers of a certain age. And then there’s the mood. Consider a shot near the end of its first act: a ghostly, out-of-season water park looming over an out-of-season man; mist clouds so dense they hang over the park’s slides; and just to the right, still as statues, a group of hooded refugees.
Rimini, a dense and discomforting character study, stars an astonishing Michael Thomas as Richie Bravo, a once-popular singer of German Schlager music (a derided and sentimental genre that came to fame in the postwar years), now making ends meet as a washed entertainer in holiday resorts where he serenades, occasionally seduces (for a little extra income) aging fans.
Rimini, a dense and discomforting character study, stars an astonishing Michael Thomas as Richie Bravo, a once-popular singer of German Schlager music (a derided and sentimental genre that came to fame in the postwar years), now making ends meet as a washed entertainer in holiday resorts where he serenades, occasionally seduces (for a little extra income) aging fans.
- 2/12/2022
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
‘Rimini’ Review: A Riveting, Upsetting Ulrich Seidl Slow-Burn Electrified by a Stunning Central Turn
Freezing winter in a place designed for frolicsome summer can be a doleful time. A case in point: the empty hotels, shuttered waterparks and endless fog banks of the Italian beach town that gives Ulrich Seidl’s challenging but riveting Berlin competition film its name. Along with the hazy gray shoreline and lonely iced-over thoroughfares, they’re the visual markers of a low season in which the “low” refers as much to mood as occupancy rates, though for the city’s tourist industry, it’s a gloom that will lift with the coming of spring. For Seidl’s film, a shiveringly precise slow burn that continues to burrow new tunnels in the mind long after it ends, no such renewal is in the cards. In “Rimini,” low season can always get lower.
The brilliantly named Richie Bravo (Austrian actor Michael Thomas giving such an astoundingly deep-dive performance it barely feels...
The brilliantly named Richie Bravo (Austrian actor Michael Thomas giving such an astoundingly deep-dive performance it barely feels...
- 2/12/2022
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Böse Spiele
Produced by Philippe Bober, Elisabetta Pilia, Ulrich Seidl
Directed by Ulrich Seidl
Written by Veronika Franz, Ulrich Seidl
Starring: Michael Thomas, Georg Friedrich, Hans Michael Rehberg
Cinematographer: Wolfgang Thaler
Release Date/Prediction: We’ve been actively premiering this film’s release for several years now – let’s hope we get some good news for Berlinale 2021.
…...
Produced by Philippe Bober, Elisabetta Pilia, Ulrich Seidl
Directed by Ulrich Seidl
Written by Veronika Franz, Ulrich Seidl
Starring: Michael Thomas, Georg Friedrich, Hans Michael Rehberg
Cinematographer: Wolfgang Thaler
Release Date/Prediction: We’ve been actively premiering this film’s release for several years now – let’s hope we get some good news for Berlinale 2021.
…...
- 1/12/2021
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
At Sarajevo CineLink talk, German producer Henning Kamm spoke about the making of the hit Netflix show.
A producer on hit Netflix drama Unorthodox has revealed the intense hands-on process of the streaming giant, during a Sarajevo CineLink masterclass.
Watch the full session below.
The drama series marked the first Netflix project for Henning Kamm, producer at Berlin-based Real Film, which has become a word-of-mouth sensation and secured eight Emmy nominations.
But it also marked a learning process for Kamm, who outlined just how involved the streaming giant was throughout the production.
“If you work for a broadcaster and you do commissioned work,...
A producer on hit Netflix drama Unorthodox has revealed the intense hands-on process of the streaming giant, during a Sarajevo CineLink masterclass.
Watch the full session below.
The drama series marked the first Netflix project for Henning Kamm, producer at Berlin-based Real Film, which has become a word-of-mouth sensation and secured eight Emmy nominations.
But it also marked a learning process for Kamm, who outlined just how involved the streaming giant was throughout the production.
“If you work for a broadcaster and you do commissioned work,...
- 8/17/2020
- by 1100142¦Wendy Mitchell¦39¦
- ScreenDaily
Imagine delivering a career-defining performance in a language you don’t even speak. That was the challenge presented to Shira Haas, the Israeli actress whose galvanizing turn propels “Unorthodox,” a four-part Netflix limited series about a young woman who leaves her Hasidic community behind.
As the courageous lead character Esty, who abandons everything she knows in her search for self-actualization, Haas cycles through many different phases of her character’s journey, from childhood to marriage to her new life in Berlin. She embodies these transformations in Yiddish and English — neither one is her native Hebrew tongue — with poise, nuance, and specificity, delivering a tour de force that makes “Unorthodox” entirely gripping from start to finish.
More from IndieWireLarry David Says He Couldn't Get Past the First Episode of 'Tiger King'Streaming Wars: Quibi Faces Its Ultimate Test, 'Big Little Lies' Starts a Trend, and 'Tiger King' Roars
Based on the eponymous memoir by Deborah Feldman,...
As the courageous lead character Esty, who abandons everything she knows in her search for self-actualization, Haas cycles through many different phases of her character’s journey, from childhood to marriage to her new life in Berlin. She embodies these transformations in Yiddish and English — neither one is her native Hebrew tongue — with poise, nuance, and specificity, delivering a tour de force that makes “Unorthodox” entirely gripping from start to finish.
More from IndieWireLarry David Says He Couldn't Get Past the First Episode of 'Tiger King'Streaming Wars: Quibi Faces Its Ultimate Test, 'Big Little Lies' Starts a Trend, and 'Tiger King' Roars
Based on the eponymous memoir by Deborah Feldman,...
- 4/4/2020
- by Jude Dry
- Indiewire
For Berlin-based American writer-producer Anna Winger, creating the Netflix series “Unorthodox” offered a unique opportunity to tell a Jewish story in Germany.
The show, which premiered March 26 on Netflix, is inspired by Deborah Feldman’s 2012 memoir, “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots,” and follows a young woman who leaves her husband and her insular ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Satmar community in Williamsburg, New York, for a new life in Berlin.
Winger, whose credits include the hit Amazon series franchise “Deutschland 83″ and its two follow-ups, “Deutschland 86” and “Deutschland 89,” co-created with husband Jörg Winger, produced “Unorthodox” via her Berlin-based Studio Airlift shingle.
The series stars Israeli actress Shira Haas as Esty, who leaves an unhappy arranged marriage and travels to Berlin, home to her estranged mother and where she hopes to study music. As she begins to navigate her new life, her husband, portrayed by fellow Israeli actor Amit Rahav,...
The show, which premiered March 26 on Netflix, is inspired by Deborah Feldman’s 2012 memoir, “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots,” and follows a young woman who leaves her husband and her insular ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Satmar community in Williamsburg, New York, for a new life in Berlin.
Winger, whose credits include the hit Amazon series franchise “Deutschland 83″ and its two follow-ups, “Deutschland 86” and “Deutschland 89,” co-created with husband Jörg Winger, produced “Unorthodox” via her Berlin-based Studio Airlift shingle.
The series stars Israeli actress Shira Haas as Esty, who leaves an unhappy arranged marriage and travels to Berlin, home to her estranged mother and where she hopes to study music. As she begins to navigate her new life, her husband, portrayed by fellow Israeli actor Amit Rahav,...
- 4/1/2020
- by Ed Meza
- Variety Film + TV
Like a continental “Goodbye to All That,” Maria Schrader’s “Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe” is an elegiac look at literary exile. Zweig, a German Jew who saw the writing on the wall when Hitler ascended to power, espoused peaceful ideals that were increasingly at odds with reality; the world benefited from his presence, but he struggled to find his place in it. Schrader and actor Josef Hader honor that alienation while also spotlighting moments of bliss throughout Zweig’s later years.
Among the author’s many well-versed fans is Wes Anderson, who has made no secret of the fact that he based much of “The Grand Budapest Hotel” on Zweig’s life and work. That film takes a similarly mournful look at Europe on the verge of war, though it isn’t as despairing — Zweig and his wife took their lives in 1942, thousands of miles from their home, with...
Among the author’s many well-versed fans is Wes Anderson, who has made no secret of the fact that he based much of “The Grand Budapest Hotel” on Zweig’s life and work. That film takes a similarly mournful look at Europe on the verge of war, though it isn’t as despairing — Zweig and his wife took their lives in 1942, thousands of miles from their home, with...
- 5/12/2017
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
Stefan Zweig (Josef Hader) - "He was considered one of the greatest travelers, the big European mastermind of the European Union."
In 2000, Max Färberböck's Aimée & Jaguar star Maria Schrader was on the Berlin Film Festival jury with Andrzej Wajda, Gong Li, Walter Salles, and Marisa Paredes when Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia won the Golden Bear and the number of translators had an impact on her. In New York, the director of Stefan Zweig: Farewell To Europe and I discussed her creative team, including co-writer Jan Schomburg, cinematographer Wolfgang Thaler, and editor Hansjörg Weißbrich. We followed a Zweig trail from Terence Davies on Max Ophüls' Letter From An Unknown Woman to George Prochnik's influence on Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel to Varian Fry, Lion Feuchtwanger and Defying The Nazis: The Sharp's War, directed by Ken Burns and Artemis Joukowsky.
Maria Schrader: "I dedicated the movie to Denis Poncet.
In 2000, Max Färberböck's Aimée & Jaguar star Maria Schrader was on the Berlin Film Festival jury with Andrzej Wajda, Gong Li, Walter Salles, and Marisa Paredes when Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia won the Golden Bear and the number of translators had an impact on her. In New York, the director of Stefan Zweig: Farewell To Europe and I discussed her creative team, including co-writer Jan Schomburg, cinematographer Wolfgang Thaler, and editor Hansjörg Weißbrich. We followed a Zweig trail from Terence Davies on Max Ophüls' Letter From An Unknown Woman to George Prochnik's influence on Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel to Varian Fry, Lion Feuchtwanger and Defying The Nazis: The Sharp's War, directed by Ken Burns and Artemis Joukowsky.
Maria Schrader: "I dedicated the movie to Denis Poncet.
- 1/20/2017
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Deutschland 83 star and Stefan Zweig: Farewell To Europe director Maria Schrader with Anne-Katrin Titze Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Maria Schrader's Stefan Zweig: Farewell To Europe (Vor Der Morgenröte – Stefan Zweig In Amerika), co-written with Jan Schomburg, is a sharp and vital depiction of Zweig's life in exile (1936-1942), portrayed by Josef Hader with nuance and grace. Aenne Schwarz is Lotte, the writer's loyal second wife and the good spirit who organizes with their faithful interpreter/guide Vitor (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) the couple's time in Brazil. Barbara Sukowa is Friderike, the writer's ex-wife. With a great Austrian accent the legendary Rainer Werner Fassbinder star (Berlin Alexanderplatz) and Margarethe von Trotta stronghold says the words unlike any other as she signals the years of the past married life with a single glance.
Josef Hader as Stefan Zweig: "I'm not Thomas Mann. I cannot send away all the petitioners."
The cinematography...
Maria Schrader's Stefan Zweig: Farewell To Europe (Vor Der Morgenröte – Stefan Zweig In Amerika), co-written with Jan Schomburg, is a sharp and vital depiction of Zweig's life in exile (1936-1942), portrayed by Josef Hader with nuance and grace. Aenne Schwarz is Lotte, the writer's loyal second wife and the good spirit who organizes with their faithful interpreter/guide Vitor (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) the couple's time in Brazil. Barbara Sukowa is Friderike, the writer's ex-wife. With a great Austrian accent the legendary Rainer Werner Fassbinder star (Berlin Alexanderplatz) and Margarethe von Trotta stronghold says the words unlike any other as she signals the years of the past married life with a single glance.
Josef Hader as Stefan Zweig: "I'm not Thomas Mann. I cannot send away all the petitioners."
The cinematography...
- 11/25/2016
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
The prophetic lines that open Naji Abu Nowar's debut feature-length film, "Theeb," speak of true depths, brotherhood, and death. And for the next hour and forty minutes, the film delicately explores these three major forces through the eyes of Theeb (Jacid Eid), a young Bedouin boy growing up in the Ottoman province of Hejaz in 1916, while the rest of the world's attention curled towards Europe and the First World War. With the support of a beautifully composed score by Jerry Lane, and Wolfgang Thaler's terrific cinematography, the atmosphere that pervades "Theeb" is one of unforced reverence. Elemental in construct and narrative, the picture breathes through the screen during Theeb's moments of quiet reflection at his surroundings and all the cruelty the vast, all-encompassing desert has to offer. Theeb and his older brother Hussein (Hussein Salameh) are nomads in the Arabian desert, learning how to survive under the auspices of their oldest brother,...
- 11/6/2015
- by Nikola Grozdanovic
- The Playlist
Theeb
Written by Naji Abu Nowar and Bassel Ghandour
Directed by Naji Abu Nowar
United Arab Emirates/Qatar/Jordan/UK, 2014
Echoes of Rudyard Kipling adventure yarns and Hollywood’s more pessimistic classic Westerns permeate Theeb, the directorial debut of Jordan-based filmmaker Naji Abu Nowar, whose film was also shot in that region and features non-professional actors from one of Jordan’s last nomadic Bedouin tribes to settle down.
It’s 1916, and in the Hejaz Province of the Ottoman Empire, Theeb (Jacir Eid), a recently orphaned young Bedouin boy, is learning survival skills from his elder brother, Hussein (Hussein Salameh). Their location means they remain ignorant of the various upheavals taking place in the world at the time, the plotting of British officer T.E. Lawrence and the Arab Prince Faisal to establish an Arab kingdom among them. It is only when a Bedouin guide (Marji Audeh) and a mysterious British officer...
Written by Naji Abu Nowar and Bassel Ghandour
Directed by Naji Abu Nowar
United Arab Emirates/Qatar/Jordan/UK, 2014
Echoes of Rudyard Kipling adventure yarns and Hollywood’s more pessimistic classic Westerns permeate Theeb, the directorial debut of Jordan-based filmmaker Naji Abu Nowar, whose film was also shot in that region and features non-professional actors from one of Jordan’s last nomadic Bedouin tribes to settle down.
It’s 1916, and in the Hejaz Province of the Ottoman Empire, Theeb (Jacir Eid), a recently orphaned young Bedouin boy, is learning survival skills from his elder brother, Hussein (Hussein Salameh). Their location means they remain ignorant of the various upheavals taking place in the world at the time, the plotting of British officer T.E. Lawrence and the Arab Prince Faisal to establish an Arab kingdom among them. It is only when a Bedouin guide (Marji Audeh) and a mysterious British officer...
- 2/28/2015
- by Josh Slater-Williams
- SoundOnSight
Debut competition titles at cinematography festival unveiled.
Camerimage, the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography (Nov 15-22), has revealed the line-up of films screening in three of the festival’s competition sections including Cinematographers’ Debut, Directors’ Debut and Student Etudes.
The entries are:
Cinematographers’ Debut Competition
Duane Hopkins’ Bypass;
UK, 2014; Cinematographer: David Procter
Sidney Lexy Plaut’s Dark Samurai;
Denmark, 2014; Cinematographer: Sidney Lexy Plaut
Zeresenay Berhane Mehari’s Difret;
Ethiopia, USA, 2014; Cinematographer: Monika Lenczewska
Krzysztof Skonieczny’s Hardkor Disko;
Poland, 2014; Cinematographer: Kacper Fertacz
Arild Østin Ommundsen’s It’s Only Make Believe;
Norway, 2013; Cinematographer: Arild Østin Ommundsen
Michael Cody and Amiel Courtin-Wilson’s Ruin;
Australia, 2013; Cinematographer: Ari Wegner
Ester Martin Bergsmark’s Something Must Break;
Sweden, 2014; Cinematographers: Lisabi Fridell and Minka Jakerson
David Pablos’ The Life After;
Mexico, 2013; Cinematographer: José De- La-Torre
Saar Klein’s Things People Do;
USA, 2014; Cinematographer: Matthias Koenigswieser
Jonas Alexander Arnby’s When Animals Dream;
Denmark, 2013; Cinematographer: [link=nm...
Camerimage, the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography (Nov 15-22), has revealed the line-up of films screening in three of the festival’s competition sections including Cinematographers’ Debut, Directors’ Debut and Student Etudes.
The entries are:
Cinematographers’ Debut Competition
Duane Hopkins’ Bypass;
UK, 2014; Cinematographer: David Procter
Sidney Lexy Plaut’s Dark Samurai;
Denmark, 2014; Cinematographer: Sidney Lexy Plaut
Zeresenay Berhane Mehari’s Difret;
Ethiopia, USA, 2014; Cinematographer: Monika Lenczewska
Krzysztof Skonieczny’s Hardkor Disko;
Poland, 2014; Cinematographer: Kacper Fertacz
Arild Østin Ommundsen’s It’s Only Make Believe;
Norway, 2013; Cinematographer: Arild Østin Ommundsen
Michael Cody and Amiel Courtin-Wilson’s Ruin;
Australia, 2013; Cinematographer: Ari Wegner
Ester Martin Bergsmark’s Something Must Break;
Sweden, 2014; Cinematographers: Lisabi Fridell and Minka Jakerson
David Pablos’ The Life After;
Mexico, 2013; Cinematographer: José De- La-Torre
Saar Klein’s Things People Do;
USA, 2014; Cinematographer: Matthias Koenigswieser
Jonas Alexander Arnby’s When Animals Dream;
Denmark, 2013; Cinematographer: [link=nm...
- 10/16/2014
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
Exclusive: The Battle of Sevastopol among ten projects being presented next week.
Sergei Mokritsky’s biopic-war drama The Battle of Sevastopol (working title) is among ten projects being presented as ‘works in progress’ at next week’s Film Industry Office programme (July 14-17), taking place during the fifth Odessa International Film Festival (July 11-19).
The €3.6m Ukrainian-Russian co-production between Kiev-based Kinorob and Russia’s New People had been pitched during last year’s Industry Office programme in Odessa, and has been shooting in Kiev and Odessa after an initial shoot on the Crimea at the end of the last year.
The historical drama centres on the life of Lyudmila Pavlichenko who killed over 300 Nazis during the Second World War as a highly decorated sniper.
Yulia Peresild has been cast as Pavlichenko, who enjoyed a 16-year friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt (played here by UK actress Joan Blackham) and inspired a song written by the legendary folk singer [link=nm...
Sergei Mokritsky’s biopic-war drama The Battle of Sevastopol (working title) is among ten projects being presented as ‘works in progress’ at next week’s Film Industry Office programme (July 14-17), taking place during the fifth Odessa International Film Festival (July 11-19).
The €3.6m Ukrainian-Russian co-production between Kiev-based Kinorob and Russia’s New People had been pitched during last year’s Industry Office programme in Odessa, and has been shooting in Kiev and Odessa after an initial shoot on the Crimea at the end of the last year.
The historical drama centres on the life of Lyudmila Pavlichenko who killed over 300 Nazis during the Second World War as a highly decorated sniper.
Yulia Peresild has been cast as Pavlichenko, who enjoyed a 16-year friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt (played here by UK actress Joan Blackham) and inspired a song written by the legendary folk singer [link=nm...
- 7/8/2014
- by screen.berlin@googlemail.com (Martin Blaney)
- ScreenDaily
The Austrian film-maker Ulrich Seidl is best known in this country for his 2007 film Import/Export, an impressive, depressing account of parallel lives in Austria and the Ukraine. Olga, a Ukrainian nurse, leaves her little daughter to find a better life in Vienna, but ends up as a cleaner in a run-down geriatric hospital. Meanwhile Paul, a working-class Austrian, loses his job with a security firm and leaves with his alcoholic father to sell secondhand fruit machines in the Ukraine.
Seidl has followed this diptych about social and spiritual poverty, disappointment and self-deception with a trilogy on the same themes, ironically called Paradise. In the first film, Love, the overweight, middle-aged Viennese divorcee, Teresa, leaves her teenage daughter with her sister to spend the summer as a sex tourist in Kenya. She experiences brief sexual satisfaction with young male prostitutes she meets on the beach before becoming disgusted with these...
Seidl has followed this diptych about social and spiritual poverty, disappointment and self-deception with a trilogy on the same themes, ironically called Paradise. In the first film, Love, the overweight, middle-aged Viennese divorcee, Teresa, leaves her teenage daughter with her sister to spend the summer as a sex tourist in Kenya. She experiences brief sexual satisfaction with young male prostitutes she meets on the beach before becoming disgusted with these...
- 8/3/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Seidl Pads out his Humanist/Colonialist Fairytale a bit too Thinly
Right off the bat, the first of Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise trilogy – this first one being subtitled Love and the next two Hope and Faith – makes a provocative unveiling with some questionable exploitation. Unrelated to the rest of the film but emotionally logical, Seidl’s reshoots the gleeful bumper car blitz from Bresson’s Mouchette, but with all of the drivers played by mentally handicapped adults. It’s a visceral yet totally isolated event, not at all outside of the world we’ve come to expect from this Austrian auteur. It’s worth mentioning it, though, because what comes in the following two hours is far more ordinary, comprehensible, and politically weighted. Unfortunately, as a two hour 1st act of what was originally intended to be a 5-hour colossus with all of the trilogy’s strands, this colonialist fairytale...
Right off the bat, the first of Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise trilogy – this first one being subtitled Love and the next two Hope and Faith – makes a provocative unveiling with some questionable exploitation. Unrelated to the rest of the film but emotionally logical, Seidl’s reshoots the gleeful bumper car blitz from Bresson’s Mouchette, but with all of the drivers played by mentally handicapped adults. It’s a visceral yet totally isolated event, not at all outside of the world we’ve come to expect from this Austrian auteur. It’s worth mentioning it, though, because what comes in the following two hours is far more ordinary, comprehensible, and politically weighted. Unfortunately, as a two hour 1st act of what was originally intended to be a 5-hour colossus with all of the trilogy’s strands, this colonialist fairytale...
- 5/18/2012
- by Blake Williams
- IONCINEMA.com
A documentary from Acclaimed Austrian director Michael Glawogger on three brothels around the world: Thailand, Bangladesh and Mexico. The filmmaker goes in search of the plain truth of prostitution without judgment while focussing on ordinary people leading extreme lives. Thanks to Glawogger’s solid reputation, the inevitably adults-only content should find a distributor, but don’t expect to see it anytime soon; so in other words see it at Tiff.
Also worth noting: Glawogger once again teams up with editor Monika Willi (a frequent Michael Haneke collaborator) and regular cinematographer Wolfgang Thaler who judging by the trailer, does an outstanding job capturing the atmosphere of the whorehouses.
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#Previous Next...
Also worth noting: Glawogger once again teams up with editor Monika Willi (a frequent Michael Haneke collaborator) and regular cinematographer Wolfgang Thaler who judging by the trailer, does an outstanding job capturing the atmosphere of the whorehouses.
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#Previous Next...
- 9/8/2011
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
A highlight of the "Illuminating the Shadows" conference: the first public American screening of Allan Sekula & Noël Burch's The Forgotten Space (an official "premiere," co-presented by the Whitney, is slated for May 15th at Cooper Union). Considering how overloaded with invective and metaphor-chains ("a velvet glove for the iron fist" is typical) Sekula's pamphlet-ready narration is, you'd expect a certain degree of pat neatness from the film. But The Forgotten Space—a documentary that is ostensibly about intermodal containers, and how their rise into prominence since the 1950s as the primary way of transporting goods by sea and rail has affected economics, landscapes, cities and labor—refuses to be compartmentalized; its parts, unlike its subjects, are not self-contained or ready-to-assemble, but are instead incomplete sections that play off of one another. These pieces become themes to be re-introduced and re-arranged. Furthermore, for a film about transcontinental drifts—not just of container-laden ships,...
- 4/30/2011
- MUBI
Reviewed at the Venice International Film Festival
VENICE, Italy -- You've heard of extreme sport. Michael Glawogger's staggering documentary Workingman's Death is about extreme work. It's a blistering examination of the extremes to which honest workers will go to earn their daily bread.
Frightening, stomach turning and deeply moving, the film should find appreciative audiences on the festival and art-house circuit and would do very well if a gutsy cable channel picked it up.
The film, screened in the Horizons sidebar at the Venice International Film Festival, is at once a celebration of the joy mankind takes in honorable hard work and an indictment of how wretched is the life of manual workers bereft of unions and other help in a world of government indifference and corporate greed.
The old pub line, "What's the worst job you ever had?" will never seem quite as amusing having seen men disappear into a hole in frozen ground to spend all day deep in the narrow tunnels of a disused Ukrainian mine trying to hammer out a sack or two of coal.
There are men who climb an active volcano in Indonesia with two shoulder baskets to fill with blocks of sulfur chipped from cooled lava while inhaling sulfurous gases and lugging 200 pounds or more up and down the treacherous mountainside for a pittance.
There's an outdoor charnel house in Nigeria where men slaughter bulls and goats, their sandaled feet stepping in the vilest bloody muck while boys skip through the crowd lugging every last limb and organ to be roasted in open pits in the ground. These scenes are not for the squeamish and will deeply offend animal lovers.
Decommissioned oil tankers are taken to a beach in Pakistan to die, their vast metal parts to be rent apart virtually by hand by poor but devoted men who celebrate life by risking death amidst flying jagged steel and the threat of oil-driven fires every minute of their long working days. And in China, the relentless demands of making steel require another generation to enter the blazing inferno of the smelters.
Glawogger and his cinematographer Wolfgang Thaler were brave themselves to obtain the unforgettable images that make up one of the most searing testaments to the simple decency of hard work.
Lotus Film, Quinte Film, Arte
No MPAA rating Running time 122 mins.
VENICE, Italy -- You've heard of extreme sport. Michael Glawogger's staggering documentary Workingman's Death is about extreme work. It's a blistering examination of the extremes to which honest workers will go to earn their daily bread.
Frightening, stomach turning and deeply moving, the film should find appreciative audiences on the festival and art-house circuit and would do very well if a gutsy cable channel picked it up.
The film, screened in the Horizons sidebar at the Venice International Film Festival, is at once a celebration of the joy mankind takes in honorable hard work and an indictment of how wretched is the life of manual workers bereft of unions and other help in a world of government indifference and corporate greed.
The old pub line, "What's the worst job you ever had?" will never seem quite as amusing having seen men disappear into a hole in frozen ground to spend all day deep in the narrow tunnels of a disused Ukrainian mine trying to hammer out a sack or two of coal.
There are men who climb an active volcano in Indonesia with two shoulder baskets to fill with blocks of sulfur chipped from cooled lava while inhaling sulfurous gases and lugging 200 pounds or more up and down the treacherous mountainside for a pittance.
There's an outdoor charnel house in Nigeria where men slaughter bulls and goats, their sandaled feet stepping in the vilest bloody muck while boys skip through the crowd lugging every last limb and organ to be roasted in open pits in the ground. These scenes are not for the squeamish and will deeply offend animal lovers.
Decommissioned oil tankers are taken to a beach in Pakistan to die, their vast metal parts to be rent apart virtually by hand by poor but devoted men who celebrate life by risking death amidst flying jagged steel and the threat of oil-driven fires every minute of their long working days. And in China, the relentless demands of making steel require another generation to enter the blazing inferno of the smelters.
Glawogger and his cinematographer Wolfgang Thaler were brave themselves to obtain the unforgettable images that make up one of the most searing testaments to the simple decency of hard work.
Lotus Film, Quinte Film, Arte
No MPAA rating Running time 122 mins.
The picture that rocked Venice, winning the festival's Grand Jury Prize, Ulrich Seidl's nasty little satire probing the seamy underbelly of suburbia makes "American Beauty" look like "Father Knows Best".
And that's not necessarily a good thing.
"Dog Days" -- the first narrative feature by Austrian documentarian Seidl, whose controversial works are being featured in this year's Spotlight section at the Toronto International Film Festival -- is destined to offend.
Shot during the hottest days of three consecutive summers (1998-2000), the film is set in and around a coldly nondescript cluster of Vienna housing estates, where inhabitants beat the heat by sunbathing their not so perfect bodies when not engaging in all kinds of alcohol-soaked, certifiably depraved activities.
Among them:
A lonely old man (Erich Finsches) celebrates what would have been his 50th wedding anniversary by having his frumpy housekeeper (Gerti Lehner) do a striptease in his late wife's favorite dress.
A lonely teacher (Christine Jirku) is getting ready for a hot and heavy evening with her sleazy boyfriend (real-life Austrian pornographer Victor Hennemann), who shows up with a drunken friend.
A lonely divorced woman (Claudia Martini) has sex with her married masseur while her persona non grata ex-husband (Victor Rathbone), who still shares the same house, listens outside her bedroom door.
A lonely, somewhat disturbed young woman whiles away her days hitching rides and then annoying drivers with her nonstop recitations of top 10 lists (the top 10 supermarkets, the top 10 lovemaking positions, etc.) and commercial jingles.
And, of course, we haven't forgotten a brief but graphic orgy sequence that Seidl has thrown in at no extra cost.
He certainly coaxes some utterly immodest performances out of his cast of mainly nonactors, captured by cameraman Wolfgang Thaler with a coarse, casual sensationalism that suggests the work of still photographer Nan Goldin by way of John Waters.
But while it's all oddly intriguing up to a point -- visually, at least, the film has an undeniably quirky originality -- there's an overriding ugliness that prevails.
After two hours of raging misogyny and, for that matter, Seidl's apparent disdain of the human condition in general, "Dog Days" gives off the noxious stench of blatant self-indulgence.
DOG DAYS
The Coproduction Office presents
an Allegro Film production
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Producers: Helmut Grasserl, Philippe Bober
Screenwriters: Ulrich Seidl, Veronika Franz
Director of photography: Wolfgang Thaler
Production designers: Andreas Donhauser, Renate Martin
Editors: Andrea Wagner, Christof Schertenleib
Costume designer: Sabine Volz
Color/stereo
Cast:
The Hitchhiker: Maria Hofstatter
Alarm Systems Man: Alfred Mrva
The Old Man: Erich Finsches
The Housekeeper: Gerti Lehner
The Ex-wife: Claudia Martini
The Ex-husband: Victor Rathbone
The Masseur: Christian Bakonyi
The Teacher: Christine Jirku
Her Lover: Victor Hennemann
The Lover's Friend: Georg Friedrich
Running time -- 120 minutes
No MPAA rating...
And that's not necessarily a good thing.
"Dog Days" -- the first narrative feature by Austrian documentarian Seidl, whose controversial works are being featured in this year's Spotlight section at the Toronto International Film Festival -- is destined to offend.
Shot during the hottest days of three consecutive summers (1998-2000), the film is set in and around a coldly nondescript cluster of Vienna housing estates, where inhabitants beat the heat by sunbathing their not so perfect bodies when not engaging in all kinds of alcohol-soaked, certifiably depraved activities.
Among them:
A lonely old man (Erich Finsches) celebrates what would have been his 50th wedding anniversary by having his frumpy housekeeper (Gerti Lehner) do a striptease in his late wife's favorite dress.
A lonely teacher (Christine Jirku) is getting ready for a hot and heavy evening with her sleazy boyfriend (real-life Austrian pornographer Victor Hennemann), who shows up with a drunken friend.
A lonely divorced woman (Claudia Martini) has sex with her married masseur while her persona non grata ex-husband (Victor Rathbone), who still shares the same house, listens outside her bedroom door.
A lonely, somewhat disturbed young woman whiles away her days hitching rides and then annoying drivers with her nonstop recitations of top 10 lists (the top 10 supermarkets, the top 10 lovemaking positions, etc.) and commercial jingles.
And, of course, we haven't forgotten a brief but graphic orgy sequence that Seidl has thrown in at no extra cost.
He certainly coaxes some utterly immodest performances out of his cast of mainly nonactors, captured by cameraman Wolfgang Thaler with a coarse, casual sensationalism that suggests the work of still photographer Nan Goldin by way of John Waters.
But while it's all oddly intriguing up to a point -- visually, at least, the film has an undeniably quirky originality -- there's an overriding ugliness that prevails.
After two hours of raging misogyny and, for that matter, Seidl's apparent disdain of the human condition in general, "Dog Days" gives off the noxious stench of blatant self-indulgence.
DOG DAYS
The Coproduction Office presents
an Allegro Film production
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Producers: Helmut Grasserl, Philippe Bober
Screenwriters: Ulrich Seidl, Veronika Franz
Director of photography: Wolfgang Thaler
Production designers: Andreas Donhauser, Renate Martin
Editors: Andrea Wagner, Christof Schertenleib
Costume designer: Sabine Volz
Color/stereo
Cast:
The Hitchhiker: Maria Hofstatter
Alarm Systems Man: Alfred Mrva
The Old Man: Erich Finsches
The Housekeeper: Gerti Lehner
The Ex-wife: Claudia Martini
The Ex-husband: Victor Rathbone
The Masseur: Christian Bakonyi
The Teacher: Christine Jirku
Her Lover: Victor Hennemann
The Lover's Friend: Georg Friedrich
Running time -- 120 minutes
No MPAA rating...
The picture that rocked Venice, winning the festival's Grand Jury Prize, Ulrich Seidl's nasty little satire probing the seamy underbelly of suburbia makes "American Beauty" look like "Father Knows Best".
And that's not necessarily a good thing.
"Dog Days" -- the first narrative feature by Austrian documentarian Seidl, whose controversial works are being featured in this year's Spotlight section at the Toronto International Film Festival -- is destined to offend.
Shot during the hottest days of three consecutive summers (1998-2000), the film is set in and around a coldly nondescript cluster of Vienna housing estates, where inhabitants beat the heat by sunbathing their not so perfect bodies when not engaging in all kinds of alcohol-soaked, certifiably depraved activities.
Among them:
A lonely old man (Erich Finsches) celebrates what would have been his 50th wedding anniversary by having his frumpy housekeeper (Gerti Lehner) do a striptease in his late wife's favorite dress.
A lonely teacher (Christine Jirku) is getting ready for a hot and heavy evening with her sleazy boyfriend (real-life Austrian pornographer Victor Hennemann), who shows up with a drunken friend.
A lonely divorced woman (Claudia Martini) has sex with her married masseur while her persona non grata ex-husband (Victor Rathbone), who still shares the same house, listens outside her bedroom door.
A lonely, somewhat disturbed young woman whiles away her days hitching rides and then annoying drivers with her nonstop recitations of top 10 lists (the top 10 supermarkets, the top 10 lovemaking positions, etc.) and commercial jingles.
And, of course, we haven't forgotten a brief but graphic orgy sequence that Seidl has thrown in at no extra cost.
He certainly coaxes some utterly immodest performances out of his cast of mainly nonactors, captured by cameraman Wolfgang Thaler with a coarse, casual sensationalism that suggests the work of still photographer Nan Goldin by way of John Waters.
But while it's all oddly intriguing up to a point -- visually, at least, the film has an undeniably quirky originality -- there's an overriding ugliness that prevails.
After two hours of raging misogyny and, for that matter, Seidl's apparent disdain of the human condition in general, "Dog Days" gives off the noxious stench of blatant self-indulgence.
DOG DAYS
The Coproduction Office presents
an Allegro Film production
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Producers: Helmut Grasserl, Philippe Bober
Screenwriters: Ulrich Seidl, Veronika Franz
Director of photography: Wolfgang Thaler
Production designers: Andreas Donhauser, Renate Martin
Editors: Andrea Wagner, Christof Schertenleib
Costume designer: Sabine Volz
Color/stereo
Cast:
The Hitchhiker: Maria Hofstatter
Alarm Systems Man: Alfred Mrva
The Old Man: Erich Finsches
The Housekeeper: Gerti Lehner
The Ex-wife: Claudia Martini
The Ex-husband: Victor Rathbone
The Masseur: Christian Bakonyi
The Teacher: Christine Jirku
Her Lover: Victor Hennemann
The Lover's Friend: Georg Friedrich
Running time -- 120 minutes
No MPAA rating...
And that's not necessarily a good thing.
"Dog Days" -- the first narrative feature by Austrian documentarian Seidl, whose controversial works are being featured in this year's Spotlight section at the Toronto International Film Festival -- is destined to offend.
Shot during the hottest days of three consecutive summers (1998-2000), the film is set in and around a coldly nondescript cluster of Vienna housing estates, where inhabitants beat the heat by sunbathing their not so perfect bodies when not engaging in all kinds of alcohol-soaked, certifiably depraved activities.
Among them:
A lonely old man (Erich Finsches) celebrates what would have been his 50th wedding anniversary by having his frumpy housekeeper (Gerti Lehner) do a striptease in his late wife's favorite dress.
A lonely teacher (Christine Jirku) is getting ready for a hot and heavy evening with her sleazy boyfriend (real-life Austrian pornographer Victor Hennemann), who shows up with a drunken friend.
A lonely divorced woman (Claudia Martini) has sex with her married masseur while her persona non grata ex-husband (Victor Rathbone), who still shares the same house, listens outside her bedroom door.
A lonely, somewhat disturbed young woman whiles away her days hitching rides and then annoying drivers with her nonstop recitations of top 10 lists (the top 10 supermarkets, the top 10 lovemaking positions, etc.) and commercial jingles.
And, of course, we haven't forgotten a brief but graphic orgy sequence that Seidl has thrown in at no extra cost.
He certainly coaxes some utterly immodest performances out of his cast of mainly nonactors, captured by cameraman Wolfgang Thaler with a coarse, casual sensationalism that suggests the work of still photographer Nan Goldin by way of John Waters.
But while it's all oddly intriguing up to a point -- visually, at least, the film has an undeniably quirky originality -- there's an overriding ugliness that prevails.
After two hours of raging misogyny and, for that matter, Seidl's apparent disdain of the human condition in general, "Dog Days" gives off the noxious stench of blatant self-indulgence.
DOG DAYS
The Coproduction Office presents
an Allegro Film production
Director: Ulrich Seidl
Producers: Helmut Grasserl, Philippe Bober
Screenwriters: Ulrich Seidl, Veronika Franz
Director of photography: Wolfgang Thaler
Production designers: Andreas Donhauser, Renate Martin
Editors: Andrea Wagner, Christof Schertenleib
Costume designer: Sabine Volz
Color/stereo
Cast:
The Hitchhiker: Maria Hofstatter
Alarm Systems Man: Alfred Mrva
The Old Man: Erich Finsches
The Housekeeper: Gerti Lehner
The Ex-wife: Claudia Martini
The Ex-husband: Victor Rathbone
The Masseur: Christian Bakonyi
The Teacher: Christine Jirku
Her Lover: Victor Hennemann
The Lover's Friend: Georg Friedrich
Running time -- 120 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 9/17/2001
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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