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 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.

 

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.

 

 

HD 3 min, © Harald Hund 2013

 

A study in illusion and fear. Walking through a forest a man encounters an enigmatic figure which appears as a fig-

ment of his imagination. In the end, the man himself might be an illusion.

 

 

HD and 35 mm film, 12 min, © Harald Hund 2005

 

A retro-futuristic film that builds on the contents of Science fiction films, but deviates from the genre in that it does

not deliver a design for the future. Taking the Sci-Fi genre ad absurdum, existing elements (e.g. modernist architec-

ture of the more recent past) were used with which to construct a Utopian-looking city. As in all found footage films,

All People is Plastic is based exclusively on existing material and the product of research. In contrast to narrative film,

identification with a protagonist is rendered impossible by people who all look the same and behave identically.

The film uses content and aesthetic means to address the impossibility of Utopias.

 

 

DV PAL 3min, © Harald Hund 2000

Urlaub (Holidays) dates back to the year 2000, when the far-right FPO party managed to enter into a coalition go-

vernment with the Conservatives in Austria. The FPO’s election campaign was marked by a racist and xenophobic

discourseand a particular hostility against Eastern European countries who wished to join the EU.

The skeleton in the film is a symbol for nationalism, a dead concept in the eyes of the author. The UFOs emanating

froma Bulgarian monument (for Soviet cosmonauts) stand for Eastern European immigrants invading Austria.

In the video the negative stereotyping of aliens (always bad, ugly, destructive and illegally intruding) is ironically

confirmed. The destruction of heritage buildings stands for the exaggerated fears of the nationalist that ‚evil‘ immi-

grants will invariablyundermine a country’s culture, ultimately changing it for the worse.