At the Venice Film Festival 2022 with their documentary Vera, Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel have given us real gems over the years. One of these is Babooska, in which reality is shown to us as it is, without any filter, proving to be in its normal simplicity more poetic and evocative than ever.
Vera is not simply a film with Vera Gemma. Vera is first and foremost a film about Vera Gemma and for Vera Gemma. The protagonist – with her flashy clothes and long blonde hair – is quite magnetic and immediately captures the viewer’s attention from the very first frames, before showing herself to the audience with all her weaknesses and incredible humanity.
In Notes from the Basement, Rainer Frimmel has selected and edited a series of films shot by the stretcher-bearer Peter Haindl between 1993 and 1999. Films in which the protagonist first shows us the house in which he lives, then finally appears in front of the camera, tells us about his everyday life and his attitude towards life and the world around him. Just like the protagonist of the famous monologue Der Herr Karl, written by Helmut Qualtinger and Carl Merz in 1961.
That’s All is an exciting and moving journey between past and present, in which fragments of everyday life are shown to us almost like old photographs. Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel have once again brought to life on screen a reality that almost seems to belong to a world apart. Once again, as usual in their works, what is told to us almost takes on the character of a fairy tale.
The Zur Person series reflects on Austrian film and cinema culture by tracing the biography of acclaimed Austrian filmmakers. This year’s film program, from April 6 to 10, 2022, is devoted to the internationally acclaimed duo Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel, who most recently received, among other awards, the Grand Diagonale Prize Documentary Film for Notes from the Underworld, thus being honored for the fourth time in a main category of the festival.
On the occasion of the Viennale 2020, directors Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel presented to the audience their newest film, Notes from the Underworld (original title: Aufzeichnungen aus der Unterwelt), already selected at the Berlinale 2020, within the Panorama section. Cinema Austriaco had the opportunity to meet them and learn more about this new work and, more generally, about their career and their way of relating to the seventh art. Interview by Marina Pavido.
Photography and cinema of reality in its purest sense are the pillars of The Photographer in front of the Camera. And once again, the unique directorial approach of Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel, made up of moments of observation and discreet following, succeeded in making us feel part of a world we knew only vaguely.
The faces of those who have witnessed different historical periods one after the other, hands intent on handling old card decks, cosy little taverns and cheerful choirs of old friends enjoying themselves singing – with the accompaniment of an accordion – old traditional Viennese songs are the true soul of Notes from the Underworld, the newest work by documentary filmmakers Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel.
Mister Universo, the newest work by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel, aims to transport us into a world apart, by making us lose contact with reality and forget everything around us.