Film program #2: Continuities of right-wing aestetics: Syberbergs Wagner/Hitler-Complex

Shedhalle / Events / March 2013

Film poster: Parsifal, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, D/F, 1982

Program 2 / Tuesday, 19.3.2013, 18:30, Shedhalle

Continuities of right-wing aestetics: Syberbergs Wagner/Hitler-Complex

a video-lecture by Peter Grabher

Both in the anti-Semitism of Richard Wagner as well as in his anti-modern art religion, the unappreciated artist Hitler found a congenial colleague and predecessor. Consistently, „fascism adds up to“ - according to Walter Benjamin – „a aestetization of politics“. Famously, Winifred Wagner dedicated Bayreuth completely to the Fuehrer and the NS-agitation film „The Eternal Jew“ (1940) quotes Wagner at a crucial point. Departing from this constellation, the video-lecture interrogates Hans-Jürgen Syberbergs filmic Hitler/Wagner-Complex, contextualizes it in the memorial epochal break of the 1970ies and presents different readings of his monstrous, anarchic and irrational montages – by Susan Sontag, Michel Foucault and Serge Daney but also on behalf of the

„New Right“. Film Clips: „Winifred Wagner and the History oft he house Wahnfried 1914–1975“ (D 1975), „Hitler, a film from Germany“ (D 1977-1980), „Parsifal“ (D 1982)

Peter Grabher, born 1969, historian and film scholar, teaches at a viennese college. 2006/07 research stay at the École normale supérieure, Paris. Works on his dissertation under the title »›here and elsewhere‹. Palestine-Israel in essay film«. Literature: »Sowjet-Projektionen. Die Filmarbeit der kommunistischen Organisationen in der Ersten Republik (1918-1933)«, in: Christian Dewald (Ed.), Arbeiterkino. Linke Filmkultur der Ersten Republik, Wien: Filmarchiv Austria 2007. Member oft he viennese group KINOKI (http://www.kinoki.at).

Film program #1: An undesirable society

Shedhalle / Events / March 2013

„An undesirable society“, Marika Schmiedt

Program 1 / Tuesday, 5.3.2013, 18:30, Shedhalle

An undesirable society

in presence of director Marika Schmiedt

Filmic Empowerment: Marika Schmiedt „An undesirable society“ Marika Schmiedt, A 2001, 70 min

At the end of this film, we are left with images of Auschwitz under a cloudy grey sky. Director Marika Schmiedt wanders through the remnants of the place which stands emblematic for the national socialist murder machinerie. Her aunt Sophie survived Auschwitz, while grandmother Amalia Horvath was murdered in the course of the so called „Euthanasia“-program. „An undesirable society“ documents the persistent quest of the granddaughter in search of her grandmother. Her history-political research intervenes stubbornly and distorts the kafkaesque buerocracy of the archives.Those prove to be institutions of permanent exclusion, which are confronted by the film´s work of self-historization. Marika Schmiedt: „For me it is horrible and unbearable to see these connections to NS-history. (...) There are attacks, progroms, people getting killed. What else is necessary? Many people know about it, they are concerned for a short while but nothing changes“

Marika Schmiedt, born 1966 in Traun/Upper Austria, is an activist, film maker and visual artist. Dealing with the situation of Roma before and after 1945 constitutes a major focus point in her artistic work.

For more information on the film and about the artist´s work: http://www.marikaschmiedt.wordpress.com