Austrian cinema for export #1: Ulrich Seidl

Image from Import Export (Ulrich Seidl, 2007)

Unlike [Michael] Haneke or his protégée Jessica Hausner, [...] Seidl finds the disturbing not in extraordinary outbursts of violence or helplessness, but rather in the everyday strangeness all around us, a world he transmits formally in blurring and ultimately deconstructing the boundaries between fact and fiction, documentary and feature. He ranks, alongside Egon Humer, as the most important Austrian documentary filmmaker of the 1990s and has only strengthened this position in the last few years.

Ulrich Seidl has repeatedly emphasised in interviews and public appearances that he never intended to be, and indeed does not see himself solely as, a documentary filmmaker. Like others working in Austria's subsidy-dependent film landscape, Seidl stumbled upon the documentary as a means to realise his cinematic aspirations without having to resort to making movie-of-the-week fare. And even before shooting Dog Days Seidl refused to call his films documentaries, maintaining that all his films have both “documentary and fictional levels”.

Seidl's stylised, laconic regard of quotidian quirks moved his work beyond the social reportage and discourses of “authenticity” and “reality” that inform other domestic documentaries. The world he records lacks any pre-packaged shine. Seidl is uninterested in “life's few happy moments”, which he justifies by asserting the contrast between his cinematic project and a wedding photographer's job.

Mattias Frey (hyperlinks added by FSFF)

Film Studies For Free brings you the first of a number of Austrian cinema-themed links-lists: this one is to anglophone, scholarly, or otherwise very useful, and openly accessible online resources related to the film work of Ulrich Seidl. Below the links list are some excerpts from his early films (trailers for some of the later ones can be seen at the official websites in the links-list).

• Martin Brady and Helen Hughes, 'Import and Export: Ulrich Seidl’s Indiscreet Anthropology of Migration', gfl-journal, No.1/2008
• Robert von Dassanowsky, 'Austria Hungry: The Return of a Film Nation', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 51, February 2006
• Mattias Frey, 'Border Zones: The Films of Ulrich Seidl', Senses of Cinema, May 2004
• Gerd Gemünden, 'Review of Austrian Cinema: A History. By Robert von Dassanowsky. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2005', Monatshefte 99.1 (2007) 131-133
• John Gorick, 'To a dog you're the world, to your girlfriend you're never sure', Vertigo Magazine, No.15, February, 2008
• Charlotte Hansen, 'The Unbearable Insistence of Authenticity', Cambridge Film Festival Daily Magazine, Issue 2008
• Aaron Hillis, 'Interview: Ulrich Seidl', GreenCine Daily, July 30, 2009
• Christoph Huber, 'Import Export (Ulrich Seidl, Austria)', Cinema Scope, Issue 31, 2007
• Import Export press folder 1
• Import Export press folder 2
• Import Export Official Website 1
• Import Export Official Website 2
• Daniel Kasman, 'Review: Import/Export', d+kaz on moving images and motion pictures, February 19, 20o8
• Glenn Kenny, 'Notes of a Seidl sceptic', Some Came Running, July 31, 2009
• Herbert Krill, 'AUSTRIA: A high between two lows? The 2002 Diagonale festival', Kinoeye, Vol. 2, Issue 10, May 2002
• Joseph Jon Lanthier, 'Import/Export', SlantMagazine, July 28, 2009
• Joanne Leal and Klaus-Dieter Rossade, 'Introduction: Cinema and Migration since Unification', gfl-journal, No. 1/2008
• Vadim Rizov, 'The Films of Ulrich Seidl', The House Next Door Online, July 24, 2009
• Ulrich Seidl in conversation with Mark Cosgrove, 'Between Heaven and Hell: the Films of Ulrich Seidl - Director Q&A', Watershed's Head of Programme, Sept 25, 2008, Watershed, Bristol - Quicktime video 55 mins

Loss Is to Be Expected (Ulrich Seidl, 1992)

Good News (Ulrich Seidl, 1990)