In the basement (2014)

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Movie
Original title In the basement
Country of production Austria
original language German
Publishing year 2014
length 85 minutes
Rod
Director Ulrich Seidl
script Ulrich Seidl,
Veronika Franz
production Ulrich Seidl
camera Martin Gschlacht
cut Christoph Brunner
occupation

Fritz Lang, Alfreda Klebinger, Manfred Ellinger, Inge Ellinger, Josef Ochs, Alessa Duchek, Gerald Duchek, Cora Kitty, Peter Vokurek, Walter Holzer u. v. a.

Im Keller is an Austrian documentary from 2014 by Ulrich Seidl and it is about the obsessions people have in their cellars. The film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and ran out of competition there. The cinema release in Austria was on September 26, 2014, in Germany on December 4, 2014.

content

The film shows people in a loose row who pursue their obsessions in the basement. In addition to scenarios that are only briefly shown, such as bored young people, a snake owner whose giant snake is killing a guinea pig, a man behind his model railway, women in a laundry room, a swimmer in a mini swimming pool or a couple presenting their cellar that has not been in for a long time is more celebrated, Seidl establishes recurring characters.

These include a woman who carefully looks after the dolls in her basement, or a hunter who presents his collection of stuffed wild animals. In an underground shooting range, an opera lover surrenders to the singing of arias and gets into a dispute with his fellow riflemen about social interaction with Turks and “other indigenous peoples, Huns and so on”. In other scenes, a brass music lover holds regular meetings in his basement, furnished with Nazi souvenirs, including a portrait of Hitler. Furthermore, a masochist is shown who talks about the pain she has suffered voluntarily and involuntarily and then lets herself be flogged. In addition, a man in a leather thong speaks of his extraordinary ejaculatory ability and its effect on women.

The film is most detailed about a couple who have set up an SM studio in the basement. There the man becomes a slave to his wife. He cleans the floor and the dishes naked, with weights hung from his scrotum at will. In the basement is shown how his wife strangles his testicles.

background

The film was shot in Vienna and Lower Austria from February to May 2009 and completed in spring 2014. It was funded by the Austrian Film Institute , the Vienna Film Fund and the Province of Lower Austria and was created in collaboration with Arte and in co-production with ORF , WDR and coop99 film production.

The documentary "Ulrich Seidl and the Bad Boys" broadcast on Arte, which deals with the work on "In the Cellar", among other things, shows that Seidl gave the instructions for action shown in the film. The director also created his own realities by changing locations, putting together subjects himself and thus condensing impressions.

The film was released on DVD in 2018 as part of the Edition Österreichischer Film von Hoanzl and the Standard .

Nazi basement

Because of the depictions of the five singing men between Nazi devotional objects in a cellar in Marz , the public prosecutor's office began investigations into suspected violations of the Prohibition Act, Section 3g of which is "every activity in the National Socialist sense," even before the cinema release.

As a result, two local councilors of the ÖVP resigned in their functions, which they had not yet held at the time of filming in 2009. In retrospect, they asserted that they were paid extras, while Seidl claimed the opposite.

The prosecution's investigations were concluded in February 2015. In May, charges were brought against the owner of the cellar for re-use under Section 3g of the Prohibition Act. The proceedings were discontinued for its four guests. The trial began on July 2, 2015 in Eisenstadt and ended for the defendant with a suspended sentence of ten months. The collection of Nazi devotional items was confiscated.

reception

The film-dienst summed up that the film is "about the excluded, about what does not seem to find a place in the public, what is suppressed and pushed into 'private', inaccessible areas: about sex, violence, submission and dominance". The magazine saw the film as the "follow-up to spectacular Austrian criminal cases in which people were imprisoned in underground rooms for years". Seidl inspects "the cellars of his compatriots as metaphorical places of abysmal impulses and urges". What "suggests authenticity and immediacy" arises more from an artificially calculated staging that is intoxicated by the supposedly scandalous, but basically terribly banal behavior of the people ". The weakness of the film lies “in its emptiness in terms of content, since the central chapters of the film are exhausted with picturesque superficiality”. In this way, Im Keller “ falls significantly behind Import Export or the 'Paradise' trilogy, in which Seidl's semi-documentarism broke new ground by embedding it in fictional scenarios”.

Die Zeit described Im Keller as a “great film” and commented, “ Im Keller is slowly developing into a documentary human condition ”, which is not least due to sex, and to the “relaxation with which perversions are lived out and reflected in this film ".

Epd Film awarded 4 out of 5 stars. Seidl creates a "very unique relationship between the protagonists and the audience" in which one has to endure each other. Im Keller took away from the Paradies trilogy , "that Seidl his characters - funny, brutal or bizarre, whatever they may be, and even if he does communicate in his pictures that he can be scared himself - at the bottom of his heart" love.

Awards

The film competed for the Politiken's Audience Award at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival , but fell behind Grant Baldwin's Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story . At the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival (Czech Republic) the film was nominated in the section Best Central and Eastern European Documentary .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In the Basement - Ulrich Seidl . La Biennale di Venezia . Archived from the original on September 7, 2014. Retrieved September 7, 2014.
  2. ^ Nancy Tartaglione: Venice Film Festival Lineup Announced: 'Manglehorn', 'Good Kill' In Competition; Bogdanovich, Franco, Levinson, Von Trier Also In Official Selection . In: Deadline . July 24, 2014. Retrieved September 7, 2014.
  3. ↑ a b In the basement. Austrian Film Institute , accessed on December 16, 2014 .
  4. ↑ In the basement. Film releases , accessed December 16, 2014 .
  5. ↑ The film. (No longer available online.) Im-keller.at, archived from the original on December 16, 2014 ; accessed on December 16, 2014 .
  6. ↑ Ulrich Seidl and the Bad Boys. (No longer available online.) Arte , archived from the original on February 12, 2016 ; accessed on February 12, 2016 : “Don't sigh, yes ?!”, “Just look at me. ... evenly. Bit faster! Is too fast. "
  7. ↑ Eight questions to Ulrich Seidl. (No longer available online.) Im-keller.at, archived from the original on February 12, 2016 ; accessed on February 12, 2016 : “The woman with the baby dolls is a good example of how filmic narration is sometimes invented through this my access to reality. The woman who embodies these scenes with the doll owns one of these deceptively real-looking reborn babies in her apartment, but not in the basement. The story that the film tells, namely that this woman hides several "babies" in her basement, with whom she talks every day, is a story made up. Only the scene is real. It is her own basement where these scenes were filmed. "
  8. ↑ The STANDARD edition “The Austrian Film” is now an impressive 310 copies. Der Standard , article from October 12, 2018, accessed October 13, 2018.
  9. ↑ Excitement about the Ulrich Seidl film: How real is the Nazi cellar in Burgenland? Spiegel Online , September 23, 2014, accessed December 16, 2014 .
  10. ^ "Nazi cellar": Seidl asserts authenticity. ORF , September 23, 2014, accessed on December 16, 2014 .
  11. ↑ "Nazi Basement Affair": Investigation completed. ORF , February 6, 2015, accessed on July 2, 2015 .
  12. ^ Indictment against the owner of the "Nazi cellar". ORF , May 5, 2015, accessed on July 2, 2015 .
  13. ^ "Nazi cellar" trial in Eisenstadt. ORF , July 2, 2015, accessed on December 16, 2018 .
  14. ↑ Josef Lederle: In the basement. film-dienst , 26/2014, accessed on December 16, 2014 (short review).
  15. ↑ ibid. (Long review).
  16. ↑ Katja Nicodemus: Pig, come here! Die Zeit , No. 50, December 4, 2014, accessed December 20, 2014 .
  17. ↑ Georg Seeßlen: Critique of Im Keller. epd Film , No. 12/2014, November 14, 2014, accessed on December 20, 2014 .
  18. ↑ CPH: DOX. Awards for 2014. Internet Movie Database , accessed December 16, 2014 .
  19. ^ Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival. Awards for 2014. Internet Movie Database , accessed December 16, 2014 .