ACFNY SUPPORTED | FILM SCREENING | NOTES FROM THE BASEMENT / AUFZEICHNUNGEN AUS DEM TIEFPARTERRE

NOTES FROM THE BASEMENT / AUFZEICHNUNGEN AUS DEM TIEFPARTERRE
Directed by Rainer Frimmel, 1993-2000
In German with English subtitles, 90 minutes

Notes from the Basement provides a radical look into the mind of the “man on the street”. Peter Haindl, a hospital orderly in Vienna, shot these home movies from 1993 to 1999. In a long sequence shot, he presents himself in the bourgeois interior of his ground floor flat to an imaginary viewer. They were then given to Frimmel, who created this 90-minute compilation.

“While striking various poses around his apartment, Haindl addresses an imaginary public, his speeches ranging from defiant to contrite. … His monologues deal with the usual prejudices, such as those against women and foreigners, and none of them can be reduced to a single coherent point of view. Commonplaces are qualified with contradictions and self-irony, and his tirades occasionally swerve in the direction of serious analysis. The state of pandemonium which characterizes the Austrian soul is depicted as a labyrinth of rhetoric.” – Dominik Kamalzadeh

VENUE
Anthology Film Archives
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