A bowl on the ground. The fallen leaves around it reference autumn. A letter enters the frame—aged hands tear it up, and its pieces fall into the bowl, not unlike leaves. Later, these pieces are burned amidst the darkness. The traces of a love story now over?
Filmmakers love shooting through windows, the various lockdowns were proof of that. Friedl vom Gröller, however, decided with typical playfulness to film the windows themselves, or their replacement, to be exact. As she observes workers moving around the frame, we are able to discover the cinema...
Wedding is a meta-amateur film, a reflection and a condensation of its form: black and white, silent, 16mm, and only two minutes long. A married couple expose themselves to a camera´s objective gaze, while at the same time face it with their own, resolute gaze-and the riddle of a fragmentary plot....
In Maya Deren’s AT LAND, each vision of a foot hitting the ground took us into a new space via the magic of montage. DAS RAD works a similar transformation through the motif of a child’s handstanding wheel motion. Silent and in grainy black and white, the film takes us, simply but mysteriously,...
A cheerful ritual in praise of Mami Wata, a mermaid-like water spirit of life, sex and healing. A joyful show of Friedl vom Gröller's particular sense of humour as well as another short song of praise for the unique beauty to be found only in 16mm film.
The film by photographer and filmmaker Friedl vom Gröller is the short portrait of a woman full of secrets. The viewer can observe her but is not given any information about who she might be: a perfect mirror for our own projections.
In this work the situation of shooting film as experienced by the subject and filmmaker is most clearly visible in the loving and then hurt facial expression of the mother, who in the end disregards the filmmaker´s instruction and disappears from the picture. The variety in the characters´...
In a series of films made in the 1990s Friedl Kubelka introduced a new element: her participation in the film by interacting with the subject. These films are designed in such a way that the camera films a frontal view of the apparently motionless face, and a touch-a caress of the hair, a kiss, a...
Men, their faces in close-up, gazing face first into the camera one after the other is the opening motif of this barely three-minute film, which only right at the end, and after the credits reveals a view of the city of Rome; of a fountain and its water-jet, which at this point could also be...
The focus narrows to short cuts relating to the place were the footage was shot, then moves to the portrait´s subject, Franz West, sitting at a wine tavern´s table. From this point on the film deals with the process of shooting film itself and the distribution of positions in front of and behind...
Friedl vom Gröller's Poetry for Sale is a portrait of a young man peddling verse on the Paris metro. Reinforcing the antiquated nature of his actions, vom Groller constructs a classical scene then cedes control to her subject, with his seductive confidence, beau-laide looks and incantatory offer.
