Directing
Ursula Pürrer is an Austrian filmmaker.
Recounts the tumultuous history of Cuba, a nation of foreign conquest, freedom fighters and Cold War political machinations.
Games with muscles, games with power, SM games. The naked body employed as a prop. Perceptions of one's own body are the focus of Body-building, and it leaves the good-girl role far behind, sometimes in striking poses, sometimes in martial dress.
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Explores the Third Reich from a contemporary perspective to investigate how the Nazis managed to conquer Germany and then half of Europe in the wake of World War I.
A filmic homage to Gertrude Stein's "Tender Buttons": Everyday objects and especially house plants are imbued with cubist dimensions – everything moves, everything is alive. Lesbian fellowship swims like fish in the water to a shore of ruins – this city can only be "ash". (Andrea B. Braidt)
"This video film shows indecency in its modern form. While peddling naked female flesh was considered indecent in the past, we can see by the examples of today´s star athletes that skin full of advertising sells better. The same applies to politicians, of course, though in a more subtle way. Advertising on skin as the new indecency! I consider this film to be a continuation of my previous work with the body as a vehicle for social codes. While in the past it was religion that dictated male and female behaviour, which was also expressed in their physical appearance, business has now assumed this role. Business dictates physical behaviour, physical pressure in its most direct form, and even sets standards for how our bodies are to be represented. Religion no longer prescribes morality, that is now done by the global power of business, with its products and codes. Morality has found a new patron." (Valie Export)
Film journalist and critic Rüdiger Suchsland examines German cinema from 1933, when the Nazis came into power, until 1945, when the Third Reich collapsed. (A sequel to From Caligari to Hitler, 2015.)
In the year 2700, a comic book artist encounters a mysterious alien while seeking revenge against the pyromaniac who burned down her printing presses.
Pürrer and Scheirl as naughty Easter bunnies create their own visual rhyme on Easter: Catholic excess and Christ kitsch become drowned out by undulating sounds and shimmering foil. Jesus pin-up and corpse of Christ reenactment included.
Two nude, female-presenting figures perform a minimal waltz to Strauss’s “The Blue Danube” on a stage resembling a variety show set. Their repetitive movements are simple: arm to hip, slight hip swing, step forward and back. Behind them, a painted black canvas shows two blue clouds and a central vase with an abstract bouquet, tied with red-white-red barrier tape—evoking the Austrian flag. A painter’s table with a sponge juts into the frame. The setting and music, full of ironic national and artistic references, create an ambiguous, imperfect tableau. Directed by Ashley Hans Scheirl and Ursula Pürrer, the film is a remake.
Thoughts of a diversity of public and private citizens on the virtues of democracy, its faults, its decadence, its fall and the rise of populism.
These shorts, executed between 1984 and 1986 in Vienna, exude an amazingly fresh intimacy and vitality. Referred to by the filmmakers as "home movies", they record actionistic performances in the directors' own living quarters, with added soundtracks of intermittent percussive sounds.
Between the “red cuts” are dynamic images of Pürrer and Scheirl, some filmed from a screen, often against a red background or completely in red. You can see Pürrer lustful, rolling her eyes back, and throwing combative glances. On the hectic soundtrack you hear screams, sounds of fighting, things breaking.
These shorts, executed between 1984 and 1986 in Vienna, exude an amazingly fresh intimacy and vitality. Referred to by the filmmakers as »home movies«, they record actionistic performances in the directors’ own living quarters, with added soundtracks of intermittent percussive sounds.
The film is a garden full of flowers and plant leaves. They’re placed in the mouth and down inside the dress neckline; they’re danced with and set in motion. They become overlong toenails or breasts that are gently caressed or maliciously squeezed. All of this goes on accompanied by both classical music and punk. In the end, they wilt.
Lunatics in the subway Take a break at the diner Goggles seen from near Astrid is very seductive and reprimands the child Favorite family-shots sneaking in Make a move upside down Toilette and confusion in orange light Marching on the meadow and the simultaneous fall in the counter-post Astrid cannot hold back the laughter Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah (Scheirl)
Two bed frames pushed together are traced from bottom to top by the camera and pass over to Scheirl in a suit, panning over her. This is followed by repeated vertical pans up high-rise buildings. In between is Pürrer with a fixed gaze and extravagant jewelry. The music is by the anarcho-punk band Crass.
The film is made up of sequences filmed from the television screen, such as advertisements and excerpts from the show “Aktenzeichen XY” (“File No. XY”) and shots of Pürrer and Scheirl. Pürrer poses with metal objects that she balances on her head or uses as a weapon; Scheirl wears a transparent tulle dress. They mark and count her birthmarks.
Scheirl’s body, with brightly painted genitals and harshly lit face, is portrayed in fragments by the camera; Pürrer is also naked. Scheirl is then shown wearing a pink dress with a floral pattern. She lifts it up and pees while standing, before climbing into a tub next to a laughing Pürrer.
Unpunctuated sentences appear word by word on the screen, pointing to the temporality of the reading process and the instantaneity of their appearance. Various phrases comment on this fragmentation: "Irritatingly searching for a medium to express the simultaneity of spatial and temporal jumps" or "The concentrated gaze of the female fetishist experiences objects and movements in exactly defined excerpts." The body, too, as another phrase suggests, is split open (aufgesplittert). In this film about seriality, people are referred to as A or G" in their sexual relations with one another.