Ekkehart Baumung

Filmmaker Ulrich Seidl explores of the dark underside of the human psyche by entering Austrian basements fitted out as private domains for secrets and fetishes.

A nurse from the Ukraine searches for a better life in the West, while an unemployed security guard from Austria heads East for the same reason. Both are looking for work, a new beginning, an existence, struggling to believe in themselves, to find a meaning in life..

In a suburb of Vienna during some hot summer days: A teacher who is in bondage to a sleazy pimp, a very importunate hitchhiker, a private detective on the run for some car vandals, a couple with a serious marriage problem and an old man, whose wife died long before on the search for some sexual entertainment live their lives while their lifelines cross from time to time.

FRANKREICH WIR KOMMEN is a highly enjoyable documentary, obviously intended for TV, but showing at film festivals. It shows us the highlights of the 1998 World Cup Championships in France through the eyes of several interesting and diverse fans of the Austrian national team. Entertaining, even for those not interested in football.

Megacities is a documentary about the slums of five different metropolitan cities.

In 1966, Dieter Dengler was shot down over Laos, captured, and, down to 85 pounds, escaped. Barefoot, surviving monsoons, leeches, and machete-wielding villagers, he was rescued. Now, near 60, living on Mt. Tamalpais, Dengler tells his story: a German lad surviving Allied bombings in World War II, postwar poverty, apprenticed to a smith, beaten regularly. At 18, he emigrates and peels potatoes in the U.S. Air Force. He leaves for California and college, then enlistment in the Navy to learn to fly. A quiet man of sorrows tells his story: war, capture, harrowing conditions, escape, and miraculous rescue. Where did he find the strength; how does he now live with his memories?

Ever had an idea for a film? Ever actually visualised this film in your mind? Or even sketched out scenes and camera angles? Plenty of film buffs have. Michael Glawogger invited 12 people to talk about their ideas for a film and then shot short fragments for them. The result is a crime-story-erotic-lyrical-experimental-vampire-fantasy-horror-soap-opera-splatter-trash-road-movie-melodrama posing as a documentary!

In conurbations where hundreds of thousands live alongside one another, in the era of a highly technological society, in which communication has never played such a significant role, man has become lonely. Disappointed by his fellow human beings, he turns to animals. Dogs and other domestic animals serve him as companions, life partners, cuddly objects and bedfellows.

This film was prepared as a introduction to a series of opera broadcasts on German television. It depicts the behind-the-scenes manoeuvrings in preparation for the annual opera festival in Bayreuth.

What does modern art mean for ordinary visitors to an exhibition?

Disappointed by failed relationships and the demands set by local women, more and more Austrians search for happiness in a marriage with women from Thailand and the Philippines. Asked about the positive properties of their Asian spouses, the answer of the Austrian husbands quite often is, "They don't talk back." Protagonist of the film is Karl S., a teacher in Vienna in his forties. Following his failed marriage he is now seeking a durable partnership and is on the lookout for a wife who doesn't question her traditional role. His solution: a wife from the Far East. Karl S. rounds up experiences and visits several mixed couples to get a clearer picture and to have his idea proven right. The film accompanies him on his search for the ideal woman and gives an insight into the imagination of these "last real men" who at the beginning seem to have hit the jackpot with their decisions

Works, legend and murders of Carlo Gesualdo, a notorious Italian composer and murderer from 16th century.

A portrait of Attwenger, the duo from Upper Austria (Markus Binder and Hans-Peter Falkner). The attempt to unite the worlds of Austrian folk music and hip-hop has already succeeded in the music of Attwenger.

Daily traffic jams on the South-East Express-Way, the most travelled road in Europe, reflection of a society dependent on cars. The jam makes many things visible for the first time; people showing their true faces in out-of-the ordinary situations.

The hero is an astronaut who has fallen from the heavens; afflicted by nightmares, he vegetates in his hospital room until an aged, sexless humanity needs him again...

In the beginning was the rhythm, then came the melody, or vice versa. At least this is the case in Vienna, where, in the quarter of Alt-Erlaa, one of the most multi-facetted musicians of the free jazz scene, Walter Malli, has his home.

Looks at two communities on either side of the Czech-Austrian border. There's an elderly man in Austria looking for a new wife, and he meets a lone single woman on the Czech side of the border.

A staged TV portrait of the Austrian cartoonist Gerhard Haderer; and first collaboration with Maria Hofstätter.

A neo-Nazi organization is recruiting in the 1980s, and two youths of high-school age join for similar reasons, despite class differences. Thomas is the son of a self-made industrialist father and a scolding social-climbing mother. He attends private school and has a brother who's an accomplished musician, but neither can satisfy mom's constant demands for school and social success. She belittles them, and there's incessant bickering at their table. Charly, a dropout, is the son of an abusive, alcoholic laborer. In the youth group, each finds order, respect, camaraderie, and adults who seem to value them. Where do domestic abuse and sanctioned political violence end?