Ruth Beckermann’s investigation into Kurt Waldheim’s Austrian presidential campaign is as engrossing as it is relevant
During Kurt Waldheim’s Austrian presidential campaign in the spring of 1986, that nation’s collective consciousness experienced a painful return of the repressed, a psychological agony recalled by director Ruth Beckermann in this documentary. Waldheim, who had been Un secretary general from 1972 to 1981, was running for the presidency very largely on the grounds of his international prestige. As far as his war service went, Waldheim had claimed in his autobiography to have been invalided out of (conscripted) military service on sustaining a wound at the eastern front in 1942. But in the febrile few weeks leading up to the election, investigative journalist Hubertus Czernin, together with New York Times reporters and researchers from the World Jewish Congress, discovered documents showing his active membership of the Sa, the Nazi Party’s original paramilitary wing,...
During Kurt Waldheim’s Austrian presidential campaign in the spring of 1986, that nation’s collective consciousness experienced a painful return of the repressed, a psychological agony recalled by director Ruth Beckermann in this documentary. Waldheim, who had been Un secretary general from 1972 to 1981, was running for the presidency very largely on the grounds of his international prestige. As far as his war service went, Waldheim had claimed in his autobiography to have been invalided out of (conscripted) military service on sustaining a wound at the eastern front in 1942. But in the febrile few weeks leading up to the election, investigative journalist Hubertus Czernin, together with New York Times reporters and researchers from the World Jewish Congress, discovered documents showing his active membership of the Sa, the Nazi Party’s original paramilitary wing,...
- 3/21/2022
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Palm Springs International Ff 2019: ‘Waldheim Waltz’ directed by Ruth Beckermann‘The Waldheim Waltz’, a film about truth and lies or “alternative facts” shows exactly how a dishonest man can rise to power. This documentary by director Ruth Beckermann, one of contemporary Europe’s finest documentarians premiered in Berlin’s Forum section in 2018 where it won the Glashütte Original Documentary Award. Us Distribution by Menemsha marks it immediately as a film which will be watched in Us for many years to come.Ruth Beckermann. photo by Lukas Beck‘The Waldheim Waltz’, screening at this year’s Palm Springs Film Festival was released in New York on October 19 and in Los Angeles in November 19. The film has received 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. It was Austria’s submission for Academy Award consideration for Best Foreign Language Film and was also submitted for Best Doc Oscar nomination.By concealing two years of his wartime service,...
- 12/24/2018
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Ruth Beckermann’s tremendously relevant documentary The Waldheim Waltz is an excellent barometer for measuring what 40 years of collective willful amnesia and denial can do to a country’s self-image. The stage is Austria in March, 1986, in the midst of the presidential election when revelations come to light regarding candidate, and former Un General Secretary, Kurt Waldheim’s war-time record between 1941 and 1944 in Yugoslavia and Greece, whereby he is accused of possible involvement or at least having had knowledge of war crimes, including the deportation of Thessaloniki’s Jewish population—details that he conveniently chose to omit from his autobiography. Less concerned with establishing the facts and validity of these charges, Beckermann chooses rather to zero in sharply on Waldheim’s own dance around the truth, his waltz from one obfuscating statement to another, his shameful gaps in memory and frustratingly daft expressions of bewilderment when questioned by the media about the issue.
- 3/27/2018
- MUBI
Watch the new trailer for The Weinstein Company’s Woman In Gold – opening April 1st.
Woman In Gold is the remarkable true story of one woman’s journey to reclaim her heritage and seek justice for what happened to her family.
Sixty years after she fled Vienna during World War II, an elderly Jewish woman, Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren), starts her journey to retrieve family possessions seized by the Nazis, among them Klimt’s famous painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I.
Together with her inexperienced but plucky young lawyer Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds), she embarks upon a major battle which takes them all the way to the heart of the Austrian establishment and the U.S. Supreme Court, and forces her to confront difficult truths about the past along the way.
For director Simon Curtis, his introduction to the story of Maria Altmann came through watching a program made for...
Woman In Gold is the remarkable true story of one woman’s journey to reclaim her heritage and seek justice for what happened to her family.
Sixty years after she fled Vienna during World War II, an elderly Jewish woman, Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren), starts her journey to retrieve family possessions seized by the Nazis, among them Klimt’s famous painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I.
Together with her inexperienced but plucky young lawyer Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds), she embarks upon a major battle which takes them all the way to the heart of the Austrian establishment and the U.S. Supreme Court, and forces her to confront difficult truths about the past along the way.
For director Simon Curtis, his introduction to the story of Maria Altmann came through watching a program made for...
- 3/17/2015
- by Michelle McCue
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
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