Friedl vom Gröller

I don’t want to be filmed but rather shoot myself (2023)

The filmmaker Friedl vom Gröller films herself and her colleague, the filmmaker Christiana Perschon. A projector casts images from an earlier Vom Gröller film onto the wall. A silent, black-and-white studio film that brings together all the elements of t ...

Palmer (2023)

The setting of the film was simple and straightforward: the now 77-year-old Friedl vom Gröller asks a (homosexual) escort to do a nude film session, has the man's fine rib underpants pulled down by her younger accomplice, filmmaker Josephine Ahnelt – wh ...

The Stolen Letter (2023)

A bowl on the ground. The fallen leaves around it reference autumn. A letter enters the frame—aged hands tear it up, and its pieces fall into the bowl, not unlike leaves. Later, these pieces are burned amidst the darkness. The traces of a love story now ...

This is for Jonas Mekas (2023)

"This unwavering attitude as well as his decision to develop his own film style under and with financially difficult circumstances are the empowering legacy for which I will always be grateful to Jonas. ...

Neue Fenster (2022)

Filmmakers love shooting through windows, the various lockdowns were proof of that. Friedl vom Gröller, however, decided with typical playfulness to film the windows themselves, or their replacement, to be exact. As she observes workers moving around the ...

Ertrunken (2022)

A short film with music written by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. ...

Das Rad (2021)

In Maya Deren's AT LAND, each vision of a foot hitting the ground took us into a new space via the magic of montage. DAS RAD works a similar transformation through the motif of a child's handstanding wheel motion. Silent and in grainy black and white, the ...

Max Turnheim (2021)

An ongoing portrait of Max Turnheim that begun in 2002 when he was 20 years old. ...

Sacrificio per la sirena (2020)

A cheerful ritual in praise of Mami Wata, a mermaid-like water spirit of life, sex and healing. A joyful show of Friedl vom Gröller's particular sense of humour as well as another short song of praise for the unique beauty to be found only in 16mm film. ...

La mia Camera (2019)

"La mia Camera" means my room, a balcony with curtains, (and my film camera). The main characters are the wind and its dancing playmate, the curtain. The wind always needs a partner, otherwise it cannot appear. On this hot summer day he shows his exuberant ...

Rust (2019)

Friedl vom Gröller´s Rust starts by gazing into the strained face of the saint. The artist herself reads "Holzschnitt", or woodcut, rather as "Höllenszene", a scene of Hell – perhaps because it appears as if animate nature is trying to force the giant ...

Paris Episodes (2018)

Portraits and fragmented views of Paris intertwine. ...

l'avenir? de F.v.G.? (2018)

A pan along a gallery of large washing machines in a laundromat. Two women speak sign language and a third feeds coins into the machine. Language is made visible. Language is a craft and serves to interpret what is and what might perhaps be. A silent film ...

Winter in Paris (2018)

Winter in Paris begins with a still-life of a window sill and beautifully detours to a gruesome-erotic allegory of death. ...

Ticino (2017)

A silent, black and white film portrait of two children set against the eponymous Swiss river, Ticino takes its cue from Franz West's famous "Adaptives" sculptures. ...

By Night to Light (2016)

Oppressive and childlike, erotic symbols and surreal moments. ...

Maschile-Roma (2015)

Men, their faces in close-up, gazing face first into the camera one after the other is the opening motif of this barely three-minute film, which only right at the end, and after the credits reveals a view of the city of Rome; of a fountain and its water-je ...

In Rome (2015)

Although this film does not follow the genre of the city portrait in any way whatsoever, it nonetheless presents a documentation of the filmmaker´s sojourn in Rome. The starting point is relicts of an empire already ruled by a culture of travel and by tou ...

Industrial zone (2015)

The title appears in thick boldface print. A short sequence of documentary snapshots, filmed off found paintings. These images pick up on figures from everyday life and religious practice, and according to the signature, were painted on public walls by a c ...

27.12.2013 St.Louis Senegal (2014)

A pan on a dilapidated square, doubled with an another pan showing a series of portraits of local men staring into the camera lens. ...

Poetry for Sale (2014)

Friedl vom Gröller's Poetry for Sale is a portrait of a young man peddling verse on the Paris metro. Reinforcing the antiquated nature of his actions, vom Groller constructs a classical scene then cedes control to her subject, with his seductive confidenc ...

Time for Outrage! (2014)

The natural law of capitalism as expressed by a hungry boa constrictor. ...

May 2012 (2014)

May 2012 is composed of three visual elements. In the momentary opening shot the camera spies on riverside joggers from the Donaumarina U-Bahn station. Inside a nearby care home, two elderly women are eating. One is the artist´s mother. She stares into th ...

Why Life Is Worth Living (2013)

The film virtually opens with a false lead, showing a poster for for Shiseido cosmetics – the kind of sign we are accustomed to seeing in display windows of perfume shops or department stores. The upper portion of the poster is painted over with the titl ...

The Paris Poetry Circle (2013)

Dedicated to the Paris Poetry Circle, this film captures the filmmaker's yearning for and unbridled interest in the human face. Poems are recited, imbuing the portraits with meaning. ...

Eva (2013)

Four young women present themselves seductively, self confidently and with some signs of shame. The camera´s low angle creates – in spite of feminism – a provocative image of Eva's everlasting attraction. ...

Kirschenzeit (2013)

A salon piece in black and white. The filmmaker circles the amorous play. Gestures and blurs, intuitively precise in-camera edits condense the situation of debauchery and digression. ...

My Precious Skin (2013)

66, Rue Stephenson (2013)

Like a dark screen stencil, a young woman dances in front of an open window. Although the film is silent, the rhythm of the music to which she dances can be imagined through her movements, often ecstatic. ...

Im Wiener Prater (2013)

Im Wiener Prater is not about the amusement park that one normally associates with this name. The spectacle in the film takes place in a much more basic sense. Right at the start, we see a camera tripod left standing, and instead, the filmmaker has set off ...

NEC SPE, NEC METU (2013)

NEC SPE, NEC METU follows upon Gutes Ende (Bliss) and Ich auch, auch, ich auch (Me too, too, me too), and it is the third film of Friedl vom Gröller to record visits to her mother in a nursing home. Like the life of her mother, the film itself is consumed ...

Guilty Until Proven Innocent (2013)

The filming of my discomfort at being a woman between the ages of 60-70 in our society has the function of a valve. It is based on the incomprehension of people who are not affected when I report negation, sometimes mistrustful reactions in daily anonymous ...

Me too, too, me too (2012)

Past the newsstand, the hairdressers, by the dry cleaners. A door opens into a sick room. A very old woman lies there in her bed. Her body is lusterless and haggard. But her gaze is firm, withstanding that of the camera. ...

My Psychoanalytic Notes (2012)

Close-ups of people's faces—psychoanalysts—reading Gröller's protocols. The fire inexorably burns through the paper. The notes about hundreds of hours of "talking healing" are silently, almost carelessly extinguished in the middle of a snow-covered la ...

Friedl Kubelka Vom Gröller – Photography and Film (2012)

A publication offering a selective retrospective of the work of photographer and filmmaker Friedl Kubelka – known as a filmmaker under the name of Friedl vom Gröller. ...

Gaelle Obliegly - le prochain (2012)

The continuation of a portrait of Gaelle Obiegly. The focus of the film is not a portrait, but rather a wide variety of cable cords in a cellar, attached to diverse light sources. A pageboy, a film projector, the person named in the title, and three other ...

People on Sunday (2011)

A group of people in a room eating pizza, drinking, conversing, perhaps having a party. ...

Ulrich Gregor and Heidi Kim at the W Hong Kong Hotel (2011)

The story of a triangle. Two people in a hotel room. A love story. Or rather, the idea of ​​a love story. A cinematic story. Everything there, inside, with no outside. A tribute to cinema in its entirety. ...

La cigarette (2011)

A young woman's body becomes the medium for the viewer's projections of the stories and biographies that are imagined about her. ...

Gaelle Obiegly (2011)

Gaelle Obiegly is a film about not being able to see, and a reversal of the gaze. ...

Photo session (2010)

Photo session is a film about a pair. A human pair: man and woman, no longer young but when they laugh together they´re as exuberant as children. And an analogous pair: a reflex camera and a 16mm film camera recording one another. ...

La Bacchante (2010)

It's composed of multiple jump-cut close-ups of a beautiful Roman Bacchante bust with garland braid and vacant eyes in the Louvre, as students and patrons mill about in the grand gallery flooded with light, casting their gaze upon the classical figure hold ...

Heidi Kim at W Hong Kong Hotel (2010)

A 2010 silent short film directed by Friedl vom Gröller. The film screened at Hong Kong International Film Festival in 2011. ...

Hen Night (2009)

Five older women, loosely grouped in two rows, gaze into the camera. At times only details of their faces can be seen, a sixth woman walks through the picture, joins the others. The image flickers briefly, disappears, and the scene begins again from the st ...

Boston Steamer (2009)

Based on the unusual idea that God's anus is visible on nights of the full moon, and determined to make a taboo visible, Friedl vom Gröller does not spare the audience the natural process of evacuation. ...

Paris June 2009 (2009)

Paris in June 2009. The title leads us to expect a personal diary entry made in a city that has often been used as a setting for ideas of love. In Gröller´s short film, which does nothing to conceal the excitement, the romantically charged eroticism beco ...

Passage Briare (2009)

A tiny picaresque set in Paris chronicling Kubelka's coy encounter with an unnamed man. ...

Delphine de Oliveira (2009)

The film by photographer and filmmaker Friedl vom Gröller is the short portrait of a woman full of secrets. The viewer can observe her but is not given any information about who she might be: a perfect mirror for our own projections. ...

Wedding (2009)

Wedding is a meta-amateur film, a reflection and a condensation of its form: black and white, silent, 16mm, and only two minutes long. A married couple expose themselves to a camera´s objective gaze, while at the same time face it with their own, resolute ...

Herachian (2007)

Friedl vom Gröller invites a stranger to his small apartment in Paris and records his reactions to an unexpected striptease. ...

Vue tactile (Four Women) (2006)

A film like a punch in the stomach. Blind photographer Evgen Bavčar examines the bodies of four women. The women's expressions and gestures speak volumes. ...

Psychoanalyse ohne Ethik (2005)

The theme of this short film is the relationship between psychoanalyst and client. Vom Gröll plays the analyst, a role she knows from real life. The setting is the studio she uses for the Escuela de Cine Independencia (Independent Film School), which she ...

Laurent (2005)

Friedl vom Gröller invites a stranger to his small apartment in Paris and records his reactions to an unexpected striptease. ...

Eingreifen (2005)

Le Barométre (2004)

Friedl vom Gröller invites a stranger to his small apartment in Paris and records his reactions to an unexpected striptease. ...

Allegory (2004)

This was supposed to be a trial film for the artist to test her defective camera. In Allegory, Friedl vom Gröller stands in the foreground of the scene, anxiously looking into the camera. A circle of women behind her gradually lends the film movement, as ...

Ohne Titel (2000)

Spitting (2000)

A young man spitting cherry pits, with an off-screen accomplice, attempts to hit the camera´s lens with one of them. Various moods become apparent on the way to a certain goal: effort, failure, then finally success. A happy, lighthearted film. ...

Parents (Mother/Father) (1999)

In this work the situation of shooting film as experienced by the subject and filmmaker is most clearly visible in the loving and then hurt facial expression of the mother, who in the end disregards the filmmaker´s instruction and disappears from the pict ...

Eltern (Mutter​/Vater) (1999)

An experimental film. ...

Peter Kubelka und Jonas Mekas (1994)

In a series of films made in the 1990s Friedl Kubelka introduced a new element: her participation in the film by interacting with the subject. These films are designed in such a way that the camera films a frontal view of the apparently motionless face, an ...

Heidi (1974)

A young woman sits on a bench in a baroque park. The motion of the wind in the leaves, in her hair, and also the flutter of her eyelashes, the opening of her lips, her imperceptible smile are all made visible with the absolutely static camera. A large baro ...

Graf Zokan (Franz West) (1969)

The focus narrows to short cuts relating to the place were the footage was shot, then moves to the portrait´s subject, Franz West, sitting at a wine tavern´s table. From this point on the film deals with the process of shooting film itself and the distri ...

Erwin, Toni, Ilse (1969)

Filmed photo portraits Erwin, Toni, Ilse, is one of Friedl Kubelka's first films. Influenced by the Nouvelle Vague and Existentialism, it was shot in the late 1960s at 16 frames per second and have not been edited. ...

Friedl (2023)

Friedl vom Gröller doesn't give Christiana Perschon an interview. She gives her more: the film of a brief encounter, which in its ephemeral playfulness, precisely captures the artistic program of those portrayed. An intergenerational dialogue as affection ...