Friedl vom Gröller

Friedl vom Gröller doesn’t give Christiana Perschon an interview. She gives her more: the film of a brief encounter, which in its ephemeral playfulness, precisely captures the artistic program of those portrayed. An intergenerational dialogue as affectionate togetherness.

An ongoing portrait of Max Turnheim that begun in 2002 when he was 20 years old.

An ongoing portrait of Max Turnheim that begun in 2002 when he was 20 years old.

The setting of the film was simple and straightforward: the now 77-year-old Friedl vom Gröller asks a (homosexual) escort to do a nude film session, has the man’s fine rib underpants pulled down by her younger accomplice, filmmaker Josephine Ahnelt – who, like a puppeteer, remains hidden behind a wooden wall – and exposes his member. (Dietmar Schwärzler)

A wink to the reaper that awaits us all, smile on the lips.

Portrait of the artist’s mother as an old woman. A farewell vignette, a final sketch from her nursing home, silent, aloof, clumsy, metallic gray, candidly-bluntly-awkwardly direct. And proud of what she has accomplished & what has remained incomplete, the lack of architecture & aesthetics & perfection & polish. Like all of Friedl vom Gröller’s films, "Bliss" is as brief and to the point as a shock or a slap to a government minister’s cheek. And as beautiful as a woman of a certain age who refuses to put on makeup, while rough gravel rattles in the stomach of a she-wolf.

Friedl vom Gröller´s Rust starts by gazing into the strained face of the saint. The artist herself reads "Holzschnitt", or woodcut, rather as "Höllenszene", a scene of Hell – perhaps because it appears as if animate nature is trying to force the giant to the ground. Gradually emerging from blurriness in the film, the hero defies fate – at least initially. In so doing, he sets the agenda for Gröller´s figures: Rust is about delaying the deterioration that comes with time. Three so-called "best agers" act according to the saying, "If you rest, you rust," training their muscles, stretching their fascia, staying on the move. (Anne Katrin Feßler)

The focus narrows to short cuts relating to the place were the footage was shot, then moves to the portrait´s subject, Franz West, sitting at a wine tavern´s table. From this point on the film deals with the process of shooting film itself and the distribution of positions in front of and behind the camera. What does it mean, filming someone whose position of power is linked to the role behind the camera? The film shows what normally isn´t visible - the "layman´s" uncertainty when being filmed.

It's composed of multiple jump-cut close-ups of a beautiful Roman Bacchante bust with garland braid and vacant eyes in the Louvre, as students and patrons mill about in the grand gallery flooded with light, casting their gaze upon the classical figure holding a basket of grapes.

Men, their faces in close-up, gazing face first into the camera one after the other is the opening motif of this barely three-minute film, which only right at the end, and after the credits reveals a view of the city of Rome; of a fountain and its water-jet, which at this point could also be ambiguously interpreted and here, as already in earlier films, through (humorous) breaks with and against itself, mirrors a direct interpretation. -Rike Frank

Filmmakers love shooting through windows, the various lockdowns were proof of that. Friedl vom Gröller, however, decided with typical playfulness to film the windows themselves, or their replacement, to be exact. As she observes workers moving around the frame, we are able to discover the cinema dispositif in everyday life in the brightness opening up behind them. The frame seems to be doubled until window and screen are the same. But more than creating a mere theoretical game, the director also cares for the silhouettes and faces of the people putting the new windows into place. New windows for a new gaze!

Portraits and fragmented views of Paris intertwine.

Although this film does not follow the genre of the city portrait in any way whatsoever, it nonetheless presents a documentation of the filmmaker´s sojourn in Rome. The starting point is relicts of an empire already ruled by a culture of travel and by tourism, its centuries-old structures; their monumentality, ambivalent beauty, transience, and omnipresent, ornamental grotesqueness. (Rike Frank)

Based on the unusual idea that God's anus is visible on nights of the full moon, and determined to make a taboo visible, Friedl vom Gröller does not spare the audience the natural process of evacuation.

Portrait of the artist’s mother as an old woman. A farewell vignette, a final sketch from her nursing home, silent, aloof, clumsy, metallic gray, candidly-bluntly-awkwardly direct.

Adama Diouf is an acquaintance, a neighbor, and a scholar, “… [A] covert mayor of Ziguinchor in southern Senegal. The formal philosophy professor, heavily influenced by French existential literature, is well known and highly esteemed in town,” says Friedl vom Gröller.

A young woman sits on a bench in a baroque park. The motion of the wind in the leaves, in her hair, and also the flutter of her eyelashes, the opening of her lips, her imperceptible smile are all made visible with the absolutely static camera. A large baroque birdcage symbolizes a hopeless emotional situation. (Friedl vom Gröller)

In Maya Deren’s AT LAND, each vision of a foot hitting the ground took us into a new space via the magic of montage. DAS RAD works a similar transformation through the motif of a child’s handstanding wheel motion. Silent and in grainy black and white, the film takes us, simply but mysteriously, into a world of childhood. The ghosts of romanticism linger in the shots of misty hills. As in von Gröller’s ELITE (V’20), the gestures of everyday life become dance-like, and the camera itself gets involved in the dizzy, wheeling motion. Normal perceptions are literally overturned.

The title appears in thick boldface print. A short sequence of documentary snapshots, filmed off found paintings. These images pick up on figures from everyday life and religious practice, and according to the signature, were painted on public walls by a certain “Papisto Boy”. Two men are seen standing in front of an old whitewashed industrial building, smoking and talking. They turn toward the camera with their arms around each other, to pose for a portrait – the camera remains distanced. A tilt guides our gaze up to the underside of the tin roof where metal has been eaten away by rust. Off-screen the sound of drums is heard.

Friedl vom Gröller invites a stranger to his small apartment in Paris and records his reactions to an unexpected striptease.

A short film with music written by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht.

16mm short film

A silent, black and white film portrait of two children set against the eponymous Swiss river, Ticino takes its cue from Franz West's famous "Adaptives" sculptures.

May 2012 is composed of three visual elements. In the momentary opening shot the camera spies on riverside joggers from the Donaumarina U-Bahn station. Inside a nearby care home, two elderly women are eating. One is the artist´s mother. She stares into the camera, from where a loving hand reaches out to caress her face. Finally, we see a Christmas pudding decorated and surrounded by candles, all afire. The scene is reminiscent of the flaming Christmas tree in Anger´s Fireworks but was in fact inspired by a viewing of Po zakonu (By the Law) by Kuleshov. The flames burn strongly and race out of control, causing the camera to become agitated, breaking free from its static point of observation, perhaps in panic. The film is characteristic of Friedl vom Gröller´s project to break down the separation between daily life and the making of art, being a particularly compelling example of her recent works that meditate on the process of ageing.

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