The great and fantastic Spanish architect Gaudì, the best exponent of Liberty style in architecture, died this way: there are rumours that he was run over by a tram while he was walking, humbly dressed. Anyway he was one of the many poors of the city. They simply left him to bleed to death on the curb. Middle class society and the system are exactly like this. One needs to be strong in order not to be run over. I consider this my last film. As a consequence of the whole worlds aversion towards these problems it is impossible to find any financial or social support to keep on working. Vlado Kristl
Vlado Kristl’s radical anarchist feature films set out to destroy hierarchies, whether perceptual, narrative, aesthetic or social. In Obrigkeitsfilm / The Film of the Authority 1971 a group of men, women and Kristl with his camera debate how to resist authority in all its forms. All cinematic professionalism is avoided as Kristl explores how to live and make films politically. The film starts with a fire and filmmakers Jean-Marie-Straub and Danièl Huillet appear surrounded by smoke heralding the burning of Munich and end of capitalism. Kristl thought this would be his last film after being crushed by the conformist and middle class society of the time, conjuring up by the image of Spanish architect Gaudi left to die in the street after being hit by a tram.
I don’t believe in the cinema. Even when it’s Godard who says these things, it’s interesting and has meaning, but it gives me a stomach ache. I don’t fetishize the cinema at all. I think of it as an instrument, a tool. I could say that the deconstruction one makes in The Bridegroom, The Comedienne and The Pimp is interesting, but the whole film is the history, the story, of a hatred and that is all. The hatred is affirmed at the beginning, in the inscription on the wall:
‘Stupid old Germany. I hate it over here. I hope I can go soon.’
– Jean-Marie Straub, ‘Moses and Aaron as an object of Marxist reflection’ interviewed by Joel Rogers, Jump Cut, no.
Introduction by Martin Brady, King’s College London
The Bridegroom, The Comedienne and The Pimp
Jean-Marie Straub and Danièl Huillet, West Germany 1968, black & white, 23 min
Obrigkeitsfilm / The Film of the Authority
Vlado Kristl, West Germany 1971, colour, 90 min
Programme duration: 113 min
Speaker Biographies
Dr Martin Brady teaches in the German and Film Studies Departments at King’s College London. He has published on film (Straub-Huillet, Haneke, Bresson, Seidl, Wenders, experimental film, literary adaptation, GDR cinema, Kafka and film, ‘slow cinema’), music (Arnold Schönberg, Paul Dessau), literature (Paul Celan, Elfriede Jelinek, Peter Handke), philosophy (Adorno), Jewish exile architects, the visual arts (Anselm Kiefer, Joseph Beuys), and disability (the portrayal of thalidomide). He has also translated Victor Klemperer’s LTI and Alexander Kluge’s Cinema Stories (with Helen Hughes).
Vlado Kristl: Death to the Audience is realised with additional support from the Goethe-Institut London and in collaboration with the Munich Film Museum.