Erwin, Toni, Ilse

I started to make films with my colleague Erwin Reichmann. We were highly influenced by the Nouvelle Vague. That was the beginning. Toni, the small kid with the pistol, is my brother. Ilse was a friend, ten years younger than me, who had recently tried to commit suicide; later she succeeded. I also made photographs of her. Ilse marks the first time that I observed an emotion arising during shooting. This caught my interest in terms of exploring the difference between photography and filmmaking. Photography deals with the suspended camera eye; it’s a disadvantage which I wanted to turn into an advantage: thus the idea of serial photography developed – taking many similar shots and comparing the images. This idea had been very much influenced by the lectures of Hans Neuffer and Peter Kubelka. When I met Peter I stopped filming, but it was also the beginning of my film education, because I got to know all these hardcore experimental filmmakers and all the problems they had. Problems with financing and distribution and problems with not being valued and rivalry and everything. I had to shut up and listen and I learned (Friedl vom Gröller Kubelka)