Homemad(e)
2001 | 85 min | Documentary
Acclaimed Austrian documentary director Ruth Beckermann portrays a dying culture of Viennese urban history.
Tina Reimann
ActorFilms
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Towards Jerusalem
1990 | 85 min | Documentary
The film moves from the lights of Tel Aviv discos to the immigrant housing of Ethiopians to the burial site of Samuel the Prophet, capturing the voices and vistas of contemporary Israeli culture and politics.(National Center for Jewish Film) "An expressive overview of Israel in 1990" (Süddeutsche Zeitung) What became of the dream of a Jewish homeland? In this documentary road movie, Austrian filmmaker Ruth Beckermann records the diverse views and activities of Israelis and Arabs as she travels ...
East of War
1996 | 112 min | Documentary
Testimony by former Wehrmacht soldiers recorded by Ruth Beckermann remains horrifying today. A controversial photography exhibit about atrocities committed by the German army on the Eastern Front during World War II inspired Ruth Beckermann to interview soldiers. What are their experiences beyond the bounds of "normal" warfare. An uncompromising film on remembrance and oblivion. "Between interrogation and pity. I must keep a distanced view. How do you film enemies?" (Ruth Beckermann’s Shooting ...
The Waldheim Waltz
2018 | 94 min | Documentary
Lies. Truth. Alternative Facts. This film analyses how the UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim’s wartime past was revealed by the World Jewish Congress. Ruth Beckermann documents the tangled web that ensnared former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim when he concealed two years of his wartime biography. It shows the swift succession of new allegations by the World Jewish Congress against him, the denial by the Austrian political class, and the outbreak of antisemitism and patriotism which led to ...
The Dreamed Ones
2016 | 89 min | Documentary
The correspondence between Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan forms the basis of the text. The story begins in Vienna in 1948, when she is 22 and he 27, and ends with Celan's suicide in 1971 in Paris. Two young actors, Anja Plaschg and Laurence Rupp, meet in a recording studio to read from their correspondence. The dramatically fluctuating feelings of the letters - between intoxication and fear of loss, delight and horror, closeness and strangeness - are passed on to the actors.
The Paper Bridge
1987 | 92 min | Documentary
"A touching film full of melancholic tension." (John Bunzl, Wien Tagebuch) "I don't know exactly why I traveled east this winter," filmmaker Ruth Beckermann says of her journey through Eastern Europe. "I think I was just curious to know whether there was still any resemblance to the stories I grew up with." Beckermann's parents met in Vienna after the Holocaust; her father was a war refugee from Romania and her mother was a native of Vienna who settled in Palestine in 1938. Tracing the migratory ...
Those Who Go Those Who Stay
2013 | 75 min | Documentary
Nonetheless, the analysis closes without conclusion: it is like an offer to her viewers to draw their own associations, their own connections. Beckermann's great strength becomes clear: the free, spontaneous leap from individuality to universality. "A grim ode to Europe" (indiewire) "Ein Film wie eine musikalische Komposition" (Jan Tabor) This film offers an intentionally unintentional gaze that allows for chance encounters, for stories and memories that lead Ruth Beckermann across Europe and ...
A Fleeting Passage To The Orient
1999 | 82 min | Biography
Rigorous and engrossing, Ruth Beckermann's documentary retraces the steps of Austria's restless "sad empress" Elizabeth during trips to Egypt in both 1885 and 1891. When the camera gazes from the deck of the ship towards the endless horizon of the Mediterranean, the image of a woman who travelled the globe without pause takes shape. Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, also gradually disappears from view, as it were: from the age of 30 she refused to be photographed.
Return to Vienna
1983 | 91 min | Documentary
“In my personal life I lived through different stages. There was one period determined by football, nothing but football; each Sunday we would go to see a match and I myself played in a team. Then came another period: politics. A very strong interest in politics and the attempt to understand this world that I only knew from party names so far. Contrary to today, people at the time had a very good feeling for who was a Jew. Today, with so few Jews around this is no longer so. Types like myself, with ...
The Old Gun
1975 | 98 min | Timeless
And just like that the film disappeared in Germany and with it the scandal. In France it won the César, yet in Germany it was roundly criticized by 'Der Spiegel' and others. The Germans were 'caricatures', 'drunkenly lecherous, loudmouthed, cowardly, brutal', it was all about 'bloody effects', as even the Catholic Film Service found. Too close to the truth, perhaps? Not enough, in the German dub the text was changed, to the annoyance of Romy Schneider, who refused to speak the text. So in the dub ...
Kurt Gerron's Carousel
1999 | 65 min | Documentary
An award-winning, authentic film about the Holocaust. "It’s a well done, very moving documentary." (Roman Polanski) The film title KURT GERRON'S CAROUSEL refers to the cabaret theater that Kurt Gerron started in 1943 while an inmate of the Theresienstadt concentration camp. A star of Berlin theater and cabaret life, and one of the most successful film directers at the UFA, Gerron, who was Jewish, emigrated to Paris in 1933 and then to Amsterdam, where he was interned in 1942, deported to Theresienstadt ...