
Directing
Friedl Kubelka is an Austrian photographer, filmmaker and visual artist born in London, England in 1946. Her photographic practice has been attributed to a 20th-century movement known as Feminist Actionism or Viennese Actionism.

What goes missing in a time when mouths are covered by masks? At the beginning you see a set of replacement teeth. This still life opens the film, which bears the ominous year 2020 as its title. Even the very first image speaks volumes: a taboo object, almost surrealistic in its loneliness, stands naked in front of us. Only in the following shot is it contextualized. The dreaded set of dental instruments keeps the dentures company. Another shot shows the filmmaker herself who, as a patient, is feeling the agony caused by the tools. Her eyes see only the glare of the dentist’s lamp. Then, in place of her gaping toothless oral cavity, there appears the radiant image of a face adorned with teeth – followed by a nightmarish panning shot, where we see the dentist with his mask-covered mouth.

“La mia Camera” means my room, a balcony with curtains, (and my film camera). The main characters are the wind and its dancing playmate, the curtain. The wind always needs a partner, otherwise it cannot appear. On this hot summer day he shows his exuberant, wanton, but also thoughtful, contemplative nature. Sometimes, when you're alone, everything seems animated."(Friedl vom Gröller)

Wedding is a meta-amateur film, a reflection and a condensation of its form: black and white, silent, 16mm, and only two minutes long. A married couple expose themselves to a camera´s objective gaze, while at the same time face it with their own, resolute gaze-and the riddle of a fragmentary plot. The staging thematizes the material it uses through minor errors in the image, like those that appear at the beginning and end of every 16mm film reel, and "bad" cuts, ghostly in between frames. What happens between the images? (Stefan Grissemann)

Friedl vom Gröller´s Rust starts by gazing into the strained face of the saint. The artist herself reads "Holzschnitt", or woodcut, rather as "Höllenszene", a scene of Hell – perhaps because it appears as if animate nature is trying to force the giant to the ground. Gradually emerging from blurriness in the film, the hero defies fate – at least initially. In so doing, he sets the agenda for Gröller´s figures: Rust is about delaying the deterioration that comes with time. Three so-called "best agers" act according to the saying, "If you rest, you rust," training their muscles, stretching their fascia, staying on the move. (Anne Katrin Feßler)

A young woman sits on a bench in a baroque park. The motion of the wind in the leaves, in her hair, and also the flutter of her eyelashes, the opening of her lips, her imperceptible smile are all made visible with the absolutely static camera. A large baroque birdcage symbolizes a hopeless emotional situation. (Friedl vom Gröller)

A group of people in a room eating pizza, drinking, conversing, perhaps having a party.
Friedl vom Gröller's Poetry for Sale is a portrait of a young man peddling verse on the Paris metro. Reinforcing the antiquated nature of his actions, vom Groller constructs a classical scene then cedes control to her subject, with his seductive confidence, beau-laide looks and incantatory offer.

Im Wiener Prater is not about the amusement park that one normally associates with this name. The spectacle in the film takes place in a much more basic sense. Right at the start, we see a camera tripod left standing, and instead, the filmmaker has set off to track down a woman (artist Martina L.). Carefully, concealed—with a thoroughly male-coded gaze—she approaches the unsuspecting woman who is out taking a walk. What we are then shown, a close-up of a woman urinating, activates a quasi-childish delight in investigating taboos: Evident here are both a conscious reference to Viennese Actionism and the counterpart to one of Gröller´s early films, Boston Steamer (2009) about the process of anal excretion. Yet rather than the close-ups of anatomical details and the associated sexualization, what is actually `unsettling´ about Im Wiener Prater is the gaze forced upon the viewer: this woman looks at us, questioning and self-confidently—now that´s pure cinema of attraction.
A bowl on the ground. The fallen leaves around it reference autumn. A letter enters the frame—aged hands tear it up, and its pieces fall into the bowl, not unlike leaves. Later, these pieces are burned amidst the darkness. The traces of a love story now over?
A bowl on the ground. The fallen leaves around it reference autumn. A letter enters the frame—aged hands tear it up, and its pieces fall into the bowl, not unlike leaves. Later, these pieces are burned amidst the darkness. The traces of a love story now over?

