The Steel Hammer Out There On The Grass
Ruth Beckermann: Keep the Camera Rolling
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42m
Dir. Ruth Beckermann, Josef Aichholzer, Michael Stejskal - 1981 - Austria
On March 28th, 1981, 10.000 people in the city of Judenburg take to the streets to fight for their jobs at the steel plant that is threatened with closure. The film shows how the international steel crisis affected Austria. How are those facing imminent job loss affected by the situation? How does the determination to defend oneself emerge within a climate of uncertainty? The film documents the doubts surrounding trade union politics and develops a cautious criticism of the uniquely Austrian arrangement established between the unions and the employers’ association known as a Sozialpartnerschaft.
"The poetic sequences produced in colour...subordinate themselves to the grey and rough general picture, even if, in retrospect, they allow the emergence of a deeper understanding of the culture of a disappeared industrial landscape." - Work in Motion, Siegfried Mattl, 2007
Up Next in Ruth Beckermann: Keep the Camera Rolling
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Return to Vienna
Dir. Ruth Beckermann, Josef Aichholzer - 1983 - Austria
A master storyteller remembers his youth in Vienna. Franz West (1900 –1985) recalls his Jewish family, his commitment to the workers' movement in Red Vienna along with the rise of Austro-Fascism and National Socialism. His memories of the d...
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Paper Bridge
Dir. Ruth Beckermann - 1987 - Austria
Ruth Beckermann’s exploration of her own family past is both the story of the Central European Jews and a history of the region. Her journey takes her from Vienna, where her grandmother lived in hiding during the war amongst the Nazis by posing as a deaf-mut...
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Towards Jerusalem
Dir. Ruth Beckermann - 1990 - Austria
What became of the dream of the Jewish homeland? A still relevant documentary road movie shot along the highway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Trucks, gas stations, construction workers, soldiers, Russian immigrants, taxi drivers, security guards: encounter...
