Michael Omasta

With her documentaries and essay films since the late 1970s, Viennese filmmaker Ruth Beckermann has created an exciting and widely recognized body of personal/political cinema. Her work reflects on the relations between history and contemporaneity, on her life as a Jewish woman in postwar Austria and Europe, and on travelling and migration as modes of staying alive - literally as well as artistically. Beckermann's films speak about identity conflicts and the class struggle, about her family history in the Habsburg monarchy (The Paper Bridge) and the war generation as it confronts the crimes of the Werhrmacht (East of War). Most recently, she has turned her sights towards the deep love affair between two poets, Paul Celan und Ingeborg Bachmann, in 1950s Vienna (The Dreamed Ones). This is the first book about Ruth Beckermann's multifaceted oeuvre, with original essays by critics and literary writers, rare illustrations and documents, and an in-depth conversation with the artist. Also included are Beckermann's reflections on her current project, The Case of Kurt Waldheim.

Romuald Karmakar's work in the fields of fiction and documentary holds a unique place in European film. It also stands in clear opposition to the dominant ways of the German film industry - both aesthetically and in its head-on treatment of several sore spots in German history. Time and again the 45-year-old director has engaged with "impossible" characters and "borderline" subjects: mercenaries, a notorious Nazi speech, the terror of being in a relationship, an imprisoned serial killer, or what it means to truly experience electronic and techno music. The book presents Karmakar's work in its entirety for the first time. It includes a 130-page essay by Olaf Möller, several conversations with the artist, an annotated filmography, and selected writings by Romuald Karmakar, including a number of unproduced treatments.

Born in a small town in Lower Austria, Michael Pilz has realized over 100 films since the 1960s. His breakthrough came with a veritable massif central of European documentary cinema: Heaven and Earth (1979-82), an epic work about the Styrian mountain village of St. Anna. Since then, he has been a "solitary man", crossing the borders between film forms just as easily as those between art, cinema, life. This richly illustrated book is the first monograph about Michael Pilz. It includes several essays dealing with his work, an extensive conversation, selected texts and film treatments written by him, and a complete annotated filmography.