KAMU, 2023 (25 Minutes), director, editor
produced by Daniel Riegler/ Studio Dan
VOID. 2023 (several music videos) director, editor
produced an created by Dominik Fuss
a project together with Dominik Fuss and Martin Siewert /and others
Xenakis Maschine, 2023, (10 Minutes) director, editor
produced by Daniel Riegler/ Studio Dan
RUINS (2021), experimental music film, 39 Minutes
director, editor
produced by Daniel Riegler/ Studio Dan
Humanity has always been caught between the absurdity of the world and a desire for meaningful action. People strive to create, to conceive, to build, to attain greater heights. In the everlasting search for novelty, however, humans are in a permanent cycle of construction and deconstruction. Nothing lasts forever, very little survives even for a few generations (and such things are referred to as “timeless”). Most progress is exposed soon enough as regress, as debacle, as an opening for destruction. Modern structures, monuments, works of art—and, in the end, humanity itself—declines, disappears, is destroyed.
Freely associating with the concept of “lost (places)”, land- and cityscapes in and around Vienna are the setting for Progress, with all the cracks and wounds of time. Under the rubrik “lost places”, film material drawn from the private archive of filmmaker Melanie Hollaus and the Vienna state and city archives is combined with new material from the year 2021 and 2022 that serves as commentary and criticism.
The results are surprising and contradictory, showing the cycle of progress and decay over the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. Following an idyllic scene from the Vienna International Garden Show in 1964, the landfill that lies buried beneath it is suddenly exposed. Construction is followed by demolition. Humans build; humans tear down.
The music of “lost” builds on the solo work of French free improvisation icon Michel Doneda. Composer Daniel Riegler views the saxophonist’s microdynamic acoustic processes through the magnifying glass of his instrumental ensemble Studio Dan: Doneda’s individual sound is the nucleus, the center of the action; an ensemble of 14 instrumentalists distributed throughout the performance space serves as amplifier, echo chamber and modulator. The music moves between nearly static, concrete situations and fragile, broken textures. Multi-track mixing of the event lends the experience acoustic three-dimensionality and layers of depth.
VISIONS - Who was Vally Weigl 2021, (40 Minutes), director, editor
produced by Damaris Richerts/ Ensemle Ultreia
Aufbruch zum Planeten Globokar, 2021, (12 Minutes), director, editor
produced by Daniel Riegler/ Studio Dan
- on behalf of Elbphilharmonie Hamburg
4 MINUS 1 (2021)
experimental Fiction Film (72 Minutes), director, editor, screenwriter (together with Christoph Lammerhuber)
Loud bomb sirens howl throughout the Austrian city of Innsbruck. Seconds later, the lives of four people will dramatically change forever.
In the near future, the European Union has fallen apart and countries all over the continent are plagued by economic conflicts and civil wars. Solidarity and harmony seem like words from a distant past. Everyone is at each other’s throats, self-interest reigns over everything.
As the bombs hit Innsbruck, three people from different walks of life find themselves trapped in the basement of a large building. All exits have been blocked by the explosion. They try to escape but all of their strategies are fruitless. As time passes, hunger, thirst and exhaustion starts to set in and frustration mounts. Their wildly different personalities collide and soon this becomes not only a fight for survival but a fight against each other.
What they don’t know: A homeless woman lives in this basement complex. And she knows a secret way out. Holding power over the fate of three hostile strangers, she is now faced with the choice of rescuing them from certain death, or playing a power-hungry game of her own in which there can be no winner.
cast: Katarina Csanyiova, Carmen Gratl, Lisa Hörtnagl, Mario Karl Rauth (and others)
director, editor, producer: Melanie Hollaus
cinematographer: Christoph Lammerhuber
writers: Christoph Lammerhuber, Melanie Hollaus
sound and sound design: Sergey Martynyuk
improvisation/ violin: Sophia Goidinger-Koch
mastering: Manuel Grandpierre, Sergey Martynyuk
poster: Michael Herzog
"STATION on stage" (June 2021), curated by Steffi Alte and Simone Bader. 4 videos on 4 performances. A project by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
"Kessel" (July 2021), music by schtum, shot and edited by Melanie Hollaus
watch video
ZEN, 2020 (8 Minuten), director, editor
produced by strings&noise
- on behalf of Austrian Cultural Forum NYC
watch video
MS Valentina (2019), director, editor, scriptwriter (together with Tina Mott)
Documentary, 80 Minutes
Trailer
The cargo ship MS Valentina covers 1640 kilometers on its route from Austria to Bulgaria. The River as an „European Road“ is full of opposites and differences.
A film about the day to day life on board the ship of a Romanian family.
A film about a natural area which always has been overmolded and destructed in a brute way.
A film that shows Europe’s economic and political diremption: From the prosperous industrial locations of the countries in the west to the abandoned industrial areas of the Balkan, the ruins of progress.
„A tumble, or maybe more like a steady fall towards the east? Everything undergoes permanent change, yet it rarely or actually never becomes better; because "progress" is but a profane shape of falling“.
The river Danube is a border made of water within a allegedly unified Europe.
director, editor, producer: Melanie Hollaus
cinematographer: Christoph Lammerhuber
writers: Christoph Lammerhuber, Melanie Hollaus
sound and sound design: Sergey Martynyuk
narrator: Katarina Csanyiova
trumpet: Stefan Prager
with Ticu Bejan, Valentina Bejan, Alexander Cacu
RISSE (2019)
Documentary, 74 Minutes, director, editor, scriptwriter
Trailer
In 1939 Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini agree on the so-called "return migration" of the German- and Ladin-speaking population of South Tyrol. These ethnic groups have the possibility between emigration to National Socialist Germany or oppression by fascist Italy. More than 75,000 people emigrate to the German Reich. From 1940, 22 South Tyrolean settlements are built in today's Tyrol. About 60 percent of the apartments in the South Tyrolean settlements are given to South Tyrolean resettlers.
RISSE shows the stories of the different groups, the ones who left, the ones who remained and also the ones who returned. In addition to the different fates of the optants, the focus is on the sometimes fiercely discussed developments of the South Tyrolean settlements, which have been demolished, renovated or preserved.
The cracks run across families, couples and villages. The violations of this time are still present.
director, editor, producer (together with BC Art Consulting GmbH): Melanie Hollaus
cinematographers: Christoph Lammerhuber, Melanie Hollaus, Antonius Bacak
writers: Andrea Sommerauer, Christoph Lammerhuber
research: Andrea Sommerauer
music: Lissie Rettenwander
sound design: Sergey Martynyuk
narrator: Rainer Egger
VERBAUT (2018)
Documentary, 40 Minutes
Still during the First World War, workers began to cultivate the land around the cities and industrial sites, cultivate vegetables and breed small animals. In remote areas, on the outskirts of Vienna, on shut down railways and other wasteland, land is illegally taken possession of.
In addition to dealing with the historical development of the settlements from the turn of the century to the present day, the focus is on the "wild", "informal" VERBAUT.
director, editor, producer (together with Andre Krammer, Friedrich Hauer): Melanie Hollaus
cinematographer: Christoph Lammerhuber
writer: Manfred Schenekl
research: Andre Krammer, Friedrich Hauer, Melanie Hollaus
narrator/ actor: Walter Ludwig
short video portraits (2010 - 2018): During several Film Festivals in Innsbruck / IFFI - short portraits on the guests of honour were developed for the so-called IFFI-roll. Among them:
Fernando Birri, Argentine film maker and theorist. He was considered by many to be the father of the new Latin American cinema.
Jeanine Meerapfel, a German-Argentine film director, journalist and screenwriter who grew up in Argentinia as the daughter of german-jewish immigrants
Ninetto Davoli, an Italian actor who became known through his roles in several of Pier Paolo Pasolini's films
Želimir Žilnik, a Serbian film director best known as one of the major figures of the Yugoslav Black Wave film movement of the 1960s and 1970s. watch video
BOCKSIEDLUNG - A part of Innsbruck (2017)
Edited by Melanie Hollaus and Heidi Schleich, StudienVerlag, Publications of the Innsbruck Stadtarchiv, Neue Folge 58, 2017
The "Bocksiedlung" in Innsbruck's district Reichenau was founded in the mid-1930s, at the time of the economic crisis. Many workers became unemployed and could no longer afford the apartments, and so a small group of people settled on the eastern outskirts of Innsbruck, which was at that time largely undeveloped. Although the "Bocksiedlung" was not the only Innsbruck settlement of its kind, it was the most legendary in this country.
Images of metamorphosis (2017)
Doku-Fiction, 70 minutes
A house for the homeless was built in Vienna by the “Neunerhaus Association”. The construction and the theme of homelessness gave cause to think about change and metamorphosis. A film about struggle and love, about work, art, and death came into being.
When the crane operator unwraps his sandwich ‘up in the skies’ early in the morning the homeless who spent the night at the construction site disappear. Two of them are Szusza and Philemon who fall in love and spend a summer daydreaming.
They dream of cruises on luxurious cruise liners and about becoming famous actors while life in the streets of Vienna forces them to make hard choices. Between passion and fight,the myth of Philemon and Baucis becomes their ideal of love.
A director and his team of actors and actresses appear on the construction site as well where they work on Ovid’s tale of Philemon and Baucis. Paintings of Rubens are used to reenact scenes ‘Tableaux vivants like’. Due to the consideration of the myth and the interaction with the future residents of “Neunerhaus – Hagenmuellergasse” the group gets more and more confronted by the social and political situation of the homeless.
The former homeless who are moving into the new house tell about their lives on the street and it’s difficulties. Cold and rain are not the worst part. And still there is hope when they talk about the good fortune of having an apartment and the new beginning this means.
By the end of the film everything has transformed. The construction site has become an apartment building. The paintings by Rubens have come to life. Art has been declared a privilege. And most importantly – the homeless have become residents with new perspectives.
Regarding the lovers Szusza and Philemon – “Poverty, loss, pain, passion, time or money may have marked their eyes, their hands, their mouths and the way they hold her arms and set their feet. But in their inner core they will be unchanged to play their role in this world.They probably will believe they are the price society has to pay. And they are probably right.”
director, editor, producer: Melanie Hollaus
cinematographers: Christoph Lammerhuber, Melanie Hollaus
sound/ music: Zeynep Sarikartal
Stalingrad - Stories of an Innsbruck settlement (2015)
Documentary, 60 Minutes
From the late 1920's on, a settlement was built south of the Innsbruck Conrad barracks in several construction stages, that has been unofficialy called "Stalingrad" since World War II . When the National Socialists came to power, the last barracks in this territory were demolished and the remaining apartments in the settlement were completed. The area was an experimental field for social housing in which new house typologies and new materials were tried out.
In contrast to the more "sophisticated" social housing, the apartment blocks were primarily intended for poorer sections of the population, barrack dwellers and war returnees.
The reputation of the notorious settlement was never particularly good on the outside, but internally there was talk of neighbourly help and close cohesion among each other. Most of the "StalingradlerInnen" felt very comfortable in their apartments and are still proud of the settlement today.
„hernalser, der stein denkt mordet liebt“ (2014)
Doku-Fiction, 70 Minutes
"hernalser" - Leben und sterben auf der Baustelle (Die Presse, Köksal Baltaci)
director, editor, producer: Melanie Hollaus
cinematographers: Christoph Lammerhuber, Melanie Hollaus
sound/ music: Zeynep Sarikartal
mirror_grid.passage, 2013, (20 Seconds),
- Gewinnerfilm „20 seconds for art“ KÖR / Infoscreen
Austrian Airlines Verwaltungsgebäude (2012)
The corporate headquarters of Austrian Airlines in Oberlaa (Vienna), a post-war Viennese building from the 1970's (architect Georg Lippert), was demolished in a "night and fog action". The monument office showed little interest in saving the "building of international importance" (quote: Jan Tabor).
watch video
Bocksiedlung – Eine filmische Spurensuche (2012)
Documentary, 43 Minuten
Today the former "Bocksiedlung" of the Innsbruck district of Reichenau, eighty years after its foundation, is almost forgotten. The inhabitants had a bad reputation, they were considered as beggars, crooks and rogues, being wild and often in conflict with the law. They renounced comfort, social security and social prestige in favour of a largely self-determined life.
director, editor, producer:, cinematographer Melanie Hollaus
New Kaisertal City (2008)
Docu-Fiction, 33 Minutes
Until spring 2008, the Kaisertal was the last inhabited valley in the Tyrolean Alps that had no road to the outside world. The 30 inhabitants had to walk over 300 wooden stairs to get into or out of the valley. In 2008, construction work was completed on a tunnel linking the valley to Tyrol in terms of infrastructure.
The history of NEW KAISERTAL CITY begins with the opening of the tunnel, thinks ahead and understands it as a social and cultural opening. The narrative is a political commentary on the situation of migrants in Tyrol.