DV PAL 5:40 min, © Hund & Horn 2002
Nothing particularly special appears to happen in Tomatoheads. A regular couple doing regular things. But something becomes increasingly strange in the way they are behaving, something that the spectator cannot read clearly. The world seems to be turning upside down.
DV PAL 12 min, © Hund & Horn 2003
Habibi Kebab is a film about the life of an artist. The film does not present a misty-eyed romantic image of an artist’s day to day life. It looks with relentless candidness behind the facade of the art business.
We gain an insight into the various complex problems that lurk along the path to fame and success: generation conflicts, exploitation by conceited or unprofessional gallery owners, but also the self-doubt, jealousy and misinformation dominating the discourse – which only looks rational on the surface.
5:30 min, HD and 35 mm, © Hund & Horn
Dropping Furniture displays the destruction of a habitat. The film is meant to symbolize the loss of existence (Production note).
What remains when nothing is left and life is literally turned upside down? Dropping Furniture initially focuses on two empty rooms. Quiet, barely perceptible sounds create subtle suspense. After a few seconds, when we have almost become accustomed to the seemingly existential emptiness of the seemingly deserted dwelling, two pieces of furniture fall into the room at the back from above the edge of the picture in slow motion. Then a chandelier in the large room at the front floats to the floor, shatters and gives the starting signal for a choreography of destruction structured by two fixed shots. As if by magic, a sofa, a reading lamp or an armchair with stuffed animals float to the ground.
The furniture of an obviously old-fashioned, stuffy living room is disposed of, only to shatter on the floor, orchestrated by a soundtrack synchronized with the slowed-down image and equipped with a lot of reverb. When the weighty wall shoring finally shatters, a telephone begins to ring in real time – a final indication of communication. Even the houseplants and the aquarium that fall down towards the end provide no clues as to the originator and motivation of this termination ritual, which harbors a subtle punchline. It is true that, similar to the cliché of the rock star throwing the television out of the window, we are ridding ourselves of a suffocating world of things in an act of destructive liberation. On the other hand, it is precisely the debris that weighs down the empty space anew, filling it with the spreading garbage of its own history. At the end, after the fade to black, we think we hear more objects hitting the ground. They sound like the thunder of a cleansing thunderstorm (Thomas Edlinger)
HD 11 min, © Hund & Horn 2010
For Mouse Palace, a 1:10 scale model of an existing apartment was built from food, and made available to mice as living space. The rodents made themselves at home in their new habitat and soon began to eat it up. The process of decay was accompanied by fierce territorial battles between two males. Mouse Palace is the continuation of Hund & Horn’s Living Space Series, which includes Tomatoheads, Dropping Furniture and Apnea.
The content of the series is the depiction of human existence under absurd conditions. In the case of Mouse Palace, mice take the place of humans.
UHD, 40 min, © Harald Hund 2023
In recent years, authoritarian tendencies have increased in many countries around the world and one small central Euro-pean country is no exception. For the time being, this development has been halted at the national level, after a new government was formed in Austria in 2019. Yet, four years after the Ibiza scandal an extreme right-wing party is once again gaining popularity and is currently even leading in the polls. One wonders what is wrong with the population’s political short-term memory when xenophobic slogans directed against immigrants and refugees have become entrenched in everyday discourse and become part of everyday speech. Forgotten are the corruption and self-enrichment of the former ruling, right-wing conservative coalition, which ran rampant in the shadow of the supposedly righteous fight against illegal migration. For years, journalists in the media have stressed the parallels between the early 20th and the 21st century. Have people learned nothing?
The 40 min film was shot at locations in Upper and Lower Austria where architectural ruins from the Nazi era are located. It poses the question of the extent to which right-wing ideology has taken root not only in the landscape, but also in people’s minds. Two federal states in Austria are now governed by a right-wing populist coalition of ÖVP and FPÖ.
HD 44 min, © Harald Hund 2021
Sanatorium Druzhba is a documentary that uses a Soviet-era building as a starting point to delve into the current situation in Crimea after its annexation by Russia. The building serves as a symbol alluding to the broken relationship, one that now requires treatment (e.g. in a sanatorium), between Russia and Ukraine. Its utopian modernist architectural style is employed as a metaphor for a seemingly utopian alliance between the two countries nowadays.
Dispensing with talking heads in favor of symbolic imagery and references, the film aims to shed light on the opinions of the inhabitants while also utilizing media coverage of the Crimean conflict from both Ukrainian and Russian perspectives. Occasionally generating an assessment divergent from that of Western media, the film examines the nowadays defunct rapport between the two nations.
HD 5 min, A 2015
This film was realized as a school project in a co-operation between Kolleg Krieglach and HLW Krieglach (Austria), as part of an English class. All characters in the film are played by pupils with special needs, the main character (the mouse) was played by their English teacher who came up with the idea of making a film.
HD 30 min, Austria / Iran 2017
In the age of „fake“ news and media manipulation this film about Iran, America’s favourite enemy, offers a view of the country through a lense of fact and fiction. The film’s main method is to de-construct „reality“ and to subvert the principles of documentary film-making. At the same time, through the use of contradictory voice-over commentary and variously connotated visual material, it also contains facts which offer the viewer a glimpse of Iran’s home affairs and the state’s inconsistencies.
Iranium may be seen as the sequel to my film Empire of Evil, but it contains a broader approach for (de-)constructing reality and questioning the claim to truth-telling in documentary films.
HD 11 min, Austria / Iran 2016
Empire of Evil discusses the Western view of a non-Western society. It does so by way of a documentary about the partial
and exclusively negative political representation of Iran in the West. The film critically interrogates the medium of the
documentary film and its claim to truth. This is achieved by juxtaposing and contrasting documentary footage shot secretly
in Iran with the image of the country created in Western media.
A music clip about a day in the life of Mr. Mailath-Pokorny, culture councilor of Vienna.
Music: Rorschach Punk, Director & editor: Harald Hund, camera: Martin Nußbaum
© Hund & Rorschach Punk 2012
HD and DCP 10min, © Harald Hund 2011
On the face of it Apnoe describes the day- to-day life of an ‚ordinary‘ family, subject, however, to an altered gravita-
tional force. The film shows the vicissitudes that everyday existence has in store for the family and the lengths they
have to go to to maintain the semblance of an orderly life. Defying all the odds, the daughter refuses to be brought
low by the circumstances. She manages to sneak out of the house at night and to pursue her secret pleasures in slow
motion.