TY - JOUR

T1 - Fooling around with film

T2 - political visions of Austria - past, present and future

AU - Fiddler, Allyson

PY - 2011/12/1

Y1 - 2011/12/1

N2 - This article takes as its focus of study two films released at the beginning of the Noughties that use the documentary mode to satirical ends. These films might be said to represent two types of ‘fake’ documentary or mock-documentary, in the first case within a film that styles itself with all the codes and conventions of a classic information film (Walter Wippersberg’s Die Wahrheit über Österreich) and, in the other (Peter Kern’s 1. April 2021 – Haider lebt), a film whose near-future setting marks it as fiction but which foregrounds the investigative activities of a protagonist setting out to make a ‘documentary’ film about contemporary Austria. Both films, I argue, draw their impetus from the political ‘Wende’ of 1999/2000 and can be taken as cultural contributions to the domestic as well as international protest at the inclusion of the populist, extreme right-wing party, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) into Austria’s coalition government of February 2000.

AB - This article takes as its focus of study two films released at the beginning of the Noughties that use the documentary mode to satirical ends. These films might be said to represent two types of ‘fake’ documentary or mock-documentary, in the first case within a film that styles itself with all the codes and conventions of a classic information film (Walter Wippersberg’s Die Wahrheit über Österreich) and, in the other (Peter Kern’s 1. April 2021 – Haider lebt), a film whose near-future setting marks it as fiction but which foregrounds the investigative activities of a protagonist setting out to make a ‘documentary’ film about contemporary Austria. Both films, I argue, draw their impetus from the political ‘Wende’ of 1999/2000 and can be taken as cultural contributions to the domestic as well as international protest at the inclusion of the populist, extreme right-wing party, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) into Austria’s coalition government of February 2000.

KW - documentary

KW - Film studies

KW - Austrian culture and politics

KW - protest

KW - populism

KW - extreme right

KW - satire

U2 - 10.5699/austrianstudies.19.2011.0126

DO - 10.5699/austrianstudies.19.2011.0126

M3 - Journal article

VL - 19

SP - 126

EP - 141

JO - Austrian Studies

JF - Austrian Studies

SN - 1350-7532

IS - 1

ER -