Helmut Junker

The Danube island in Vienna where life cannot be hidden away in the private home, where it is lived in the open for all to see. This is where many spend their "second real life", which begins after the workday.

Lower Austria, Vienna. Time frame: from 1961 to the present. The family: 19 children born between 1961 and 1989. The father: a deeply religious man. His wife and children: possessions.

The inside of a Viennese section of the Austrian Socialist Party (SPÖ). The number of members has gone down, but otherwise everything is still the same. The group of indefatigable comrades and their new district representative, Brigitte Ederer, are accompanied in their groundwork; at the weekly section meetings, in their work in the district parliamentary party, at outdoor festivals, pensioners' parties and children's discos, collecting contributions door to door, during arduous confrontation with the inhabitants of the locality, and, not least, at the district elections. The election result of 9th October 1994 was a disaster for the party.

Requiem for Dominic powerfully portrayed the upheaval in that liminal space between revolution and order. This drama is captured partly on film, partly on video adding to the gritty reality of the time, place and events as they were unfolding in Eastern Europe as the "Iron Curtain" collapsed.

This documentary, Ulrich Seidl's full-length film debut, examines the lives of the street newspaper sellers in Vienna, a mixture of men from Turkey, India, Pakistan, Egypt and Eastern Europe, standing out in all weathers, peddling the trivial Viennese tabloids. We see their lives on the street, their cramped living quarters, their minders, the 'training' days, and the inhumane process which keeps them working endless hour for little reward.

A sketch: Observation of everyday life of people and situations in Vienna. "Visual art is an excellent way of observation in our culture. The everyday situations are seen briefly, continously but rarely as perceived and consciously experienced." (Michael Kreihsl)

Grein, a truck driver, works for Sienmann, an undesirable man, dedicated to fraud.