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Ruth Beckermann (born 1952) is an Austrian filmmaker and writer, who lives and works in Vienna and Paris. Her films have been shown at prestigious festivals, and Paper Bridge and East of War won several major awards.
Early life and education
Ruth Beckermann was born in Vienna, Austria in 1952. Her parents were Jewish survivors of the Holocaust.[1]
Beckermann studied journalism and art history in Vienna and Tel Aviv, and received her doctorate in 1977. In New York she studied photography at the School of Visual Arts.[2] During her studies, she contributed as a journalist to several Austrian and Swiss magazines.[3]
Career
Her first film was made in cooperation with Josef Aichholzer and Franz Grafl of the Videogroup Arena in 1977. Shot on video and 16mm film, Arena Besetzt (Arena Squatted) documented the occupation of the old Viennese slaughterhouse Arena.[4][5] The following year, Beckermann founded the film distribution company Filmladen along with Aichholzer and Grafl, where she continued working until 1985.[6]
In 1978 and 1981, filmed shot two documentaries, Suddenly A Strike[7] and The Steelhammer Out there on The Grass on the topics of labour and strike.[8]
In 1983, Beckermann released Return to Vienna, which documents the journeys and experiences of Franz West, a Jewish Social Democrat living in Vienna during the First and Second World Wars.[9][10] The film is the first of a trilogy, in which Beckermann deals with Jewish narratives of loss, memory and identity. Following this film, Paper Bridge (1987) depicts a journey leading from Vienna to Romania, where Beckermann visits the Bukovina region, the birthplace of her father during a time when this region was still under Habsburg rule.[11] In Towards Jerusalem Beckermann travels between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem while exploring the Zionist utopia of a Jewish homeland.[12] These films - Return to Vienna, Paper Bridge and Towards Jerusalem use different forms of travel as both content and formal organising principle.[citation needed]
In 1996, East of War[13] was made during the so-called Wehrmachtsausstellung. In front of the out-of-focus-photographs, former soldiers of the German Wehrmacht talk about their experiences beyond the "normal" war. A film which not only pushes forward the destruction of the "good-Wehrmacht" myth, but also takes a close look at the process of constructing history in post-World War II Austria.[14]
In her 1999 film, A Fleeting Passage to The Orient, she follows the traces of Elisabeth of Bavaria.[15] In 2001, homemad(e) depicts how the political turn in 2000 was reflected in a Viennese coffee house.[16]
A Fleeting Passage to the Orient (Ein flüchtiger Zug nach dem Orient; 1999)
East of War (Jenseits des Krieges; 1996)
Towards Jerusalem (Nach Jerusalem; 1991)
The Paper Bridge (1987)
Return to Vienna (1983)
Arena Squatted (1977)
References
^Baker and Rohrbacher (2009). ""E/Motion Pictures": Conversations with Austrian Documentary Filmmakers Mirjam Unger and Ruth Beckermann". Women in German Yearbook.
