Fernsehfilme II
Ulrich Seidl: Fernsehfilme II
Ulrich Seidl also made programmes for Austrian television. Bilder einer Ausstellung and Der Busenfreund feature a typical Seidl ‘character’: René Rupnik, a man who has set up his own unique system for living. An eccentric to the outside world perhaps, but for Seidl an authentic individual.
Compilation of documentaries made by Ulrich Seidl for television – in the unique Seidl style – in the nineties, where ‘ordinary men’ get to speak. But is the ‘ordinary Austrian’ really all that ordinary?
In Bilder Einer Ausstellung (1996), visitors to an exhibition talk candidly about their relationship to modern and contemporary art; the tone is radically different from the impenetrable and often hilarious jargon used by the art world (‘international art speak’). Seidl is interested mainly in the emotional significance of art to the ‘lay person’.
Der Busenfreund (1997) seems like one of the most absurd films in Seidl’s repertoire. We meet maths teacher René Rupnik (who previously appeared in Bilder Einer Ausstellung), who talks freely about his fascination with Viennese actress Senta Berger, and his obsession with big breasts; Rupnik’s possessive mother plays a not insignificant role in the story.
Programme
Bilder einer Ausstellung (Ulrich Seidl, AT 1996, 45’)
What words do we use when talking about modern and contemporary art? What do we think and feel when facing enigmatic installations, performances, objects and paintings? What does art do with us? What meaning do we attribute to it? Is it a reflection of social reality, or nothing more than an expression of egomaniacal self-examination by the artist? Seidl gets people to talk, discuss and think about modern art, until they arrive at their own dreams, visions, fears, sexuality – and death.
Der Busenfreund (Ulrich Seidl, AT 1997, 60’)
50-year-old maths teacher René Rupnik lives with his elderly mother, barricaded behind stacks of waste, paper and newspapers he’s collected from the streets. In his fantasy life, this obsessive ‘bosom expert’ lives with Senta Berger, a famous actress in Vienna whom he’s worshipped for decades. For René, the curves of the sine and cosine, which he draws on the blackboard, represent just one thing: women’s bosoms, and in particular Senta Berger’s ‘perfect’ set. Seidl on Rupnik: "René lives in his own tailor-made emotional and mental fantasy world from which he interprets reality. As a bosom fetishist in The Bosom Friend, he assembles like Frankenstein the physically ideal woman, thereby combining various fantasies, desires and abysses that should come as no surprise to us men."
This is part of
Special screenings
Details
Production year
2026
Length
109 min.
Country
NL
Language
Germam
Subtitles
English
Part of
Ulrich Seidl
Eye Filmmuseum presents Ulrich Seidl – Über das Leben, die Liebe und den Tod, the first exhibition – and the first complete film overview – of the renowned Austrian filmmaker in the Netherlands. Featuring a wealth of early, little-known and newly commissioned (film) works, the exhibition confronts visitors with the lives of a number of seemingly ordinary individuals, people who try to, in their own ways, make something of life in a late-capitalist society in which meaning has been replaced by consumerism.
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