Ruth Beckermann [German-Language Edition]

With her documentaries and essay films since the late 1970s, Viennese filmmaker Ruth Beckermann has created an exciting and widely recognized body of personal/political cinema. Her work reflects on the relations between history and contemporaneity, on her life as a Jewish woman in postwar Austria and Europe, and on travelling and migration as modes of staying alive - literally as well as artistically. Beckermann's films speak about identity conflicts and the class struggle, about her family history in the Habsburg monarchy (The Paper Bridge) and the war generation as it confronts the crimes of the Werhrmacht (East of War). Most recently, she has turned her sights towards the deep love affair between two poets, Paul Celan und Ingeborg Bachmann, in 1950s Vienna (The Dreamed Ones). This is the first book about Ruth Beckermann's multifaceted oeuvre, with original essays by critics and literary writers, rare illustrations and documents, and an in-depth conversation with the artist. Also included are Beckermann's reflections on her current project, The Case of Kurt Waldheim


About the Author

Alexander Horwath is the director of the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna, the former director of the Vienna International Film Festival, and the film curator of documenta 12 (2007). He is a member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and of the Vienna Secession. Among his publications are books on film curatorship, Michael Haneke, Josef von Sternberg, and American cinema of the 1960s and 70s.

Michael Omasta is the film editor of the weekly Falter, and board member of SYNEMA - Society for Film & Media. He has conducted numerous research projects on filmmakers in exile and (co-)edited film books on Claire Denis, Alexander Hammid, Carl Mayer, Wolf Suschitzky, Peter Lorre, and Josef von Sternberg's The Case of Lena Smith, among others.