In Suddenly, a Strike the camera of Josef Aichholzer and Ruth Beckeremann is immediately close to the workers. Filmed in 16mm and totally in black and white, the documentary includes footage shot directly by the directors during workers’ meetings or while they are intent on entering the factory, as well as single frames of the factory owners and short animation inserts by the late Manfred Deix. At the Viennale 2022 within the retrospective Österreich real.
The room is very spacious, the sofa decidedly comfortable, the topics dealt with often excessively controversial. But that is precisely the point of Mutzenbacher: to allow everyone to identify with those who are usually strongly judged, feeling vulnerable in turn and trying to understand dynamics that are anything but simple.
Homemad(e) is a precious document of a world that was and a world that is. A journey through 20th-century Viennese history, through a series of images, faces and testimonies of those who, mindful of a sometimes painful past, have decided to tell their stories about Vienna entering a new millennium.