DELPHINE DE OLIVEIRA

Born in London in 1946, Friedl vom Gröller spent her childhood between Vienna and Berlin. She studied photography at the School of Graphic Arts in the Austrian capital from 1965 to 1969. Vom Gröller, who has directed some 80 films, works with 16mm film stock (almost always in black and white and usually without sound), using 30-metre reels and a hand-cranked camera. No script, no assistant, no post-production. Her films are mostly edited in camera. In 1990, she founded and directed the Vienna School of Artistic Photography, whilst in 2006 she established and continues to direct the Vienna School of Independent Cinema.

by Cecilia Ermini and Stefano Miraglia

How do you approach the portrayal of your subjects, and how has that approach evolved over the years?
I started when I was 16 and feeling depressed, and to become more active I began approaching strangers and artists I admired to photograph them – and later to film them. Over the years, I’ve gained a great deal of experience, and I no longer take rejection personally. Eventually, I realised that photography and filmmaking were really just a pretext for adventure. I simply ask people, and most of them seem to sense a certain connection between us.
How much importance do you place on eliciting a possible reaction from the subjects you film? What is more important: the potential for a gesture, or the subject’s state of unpreparedness during filming?
I was influenced by televised sports events from the 1970s onwards, when athletes showed genuine emotion in moments of victory or defeat, rather than putting on a performance as they often seem to do today. In a way, I was also influenced by my own film Ilse [now compiled in Erwin, Toni, Ilse, 1969]. I’m interested in capturing evolving emotions that differ from those typically seen in commercial cinema. That’s why spontaneity is so important.
You did not make any films between 1969 and the early 1990s. Could you reflect on this period of hiatus, and on what prompted your return to filmmaking?
I stopped making films when I fell in love with Peter Kubelka and, as a result, met many important filmmakers from the New American Cinema movement. I realised that I was completely uneducated in that field, so I stepped away. In 1990, I founded the School for Art Photography (Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, now directed by Anja Manfredi), where I also invited film lecturers. In 2006, I founded the School for Independent Film (Schule für unabhängigen Film, now directed by Philipp Fleischmann), and my passion was rekindled. Our visits to the Cyclical Programme at the Austrian Filmmuseum, which was founded by Kubelka, were equally influential.
Why did you begin appearing in your films alongside the people you were filming?
The first of my films I appeared in was Blood Brotherhood (1970), which was made as a document of a real action. Nearly all of the films in which I appear are intended as documents, with varying degrees of importance. Above all, I seek an emotional reflection of myself, like looking into a mirror. At times, the work is purely provocative, as in Viennese Actionism. I work without assistance: I am alone with another person and use only analogue film, which means that the document remains invisible to us afterwards.
In your career, beyond moving images and photography, two practices have significantly shaped your trajectory: pedagogy and psychoanalysis.
Everything “confessed” here is shaped by my own psychoanalysis. Pedagogy plays no role. However, the open atmosphere of the schools has also been very stimulating for me.
What does Dreyer’s cinema represent to you and your practice? I’m thinking of your film Dreyers Zitat (2001–2002), but also of the image before the end of Rivalinnen: the entrance of the Max Linder Panorama in Paris, with the announcement of the Dreyer retrospective.
The Cyclical Programme at the Austrian Filmmuseum enabled me to watch films by Carl Theodor Dreyer, as well as those by other filmmakers, repeatedly. I think it is the combination of his passion and his contemplative nature that I find so moving. After filming Rivalinnen, I went to the Max Linder Cinema and saw Gertrud.
I would like you to talk about the films you were unable to make, and the people you were unable to film.
None of my films turn out as I intended. The reason is that I’m unable to fix my fantasies on film. The films are largely shaped by chance. I don’t recall anyone ever refusing to take part in a film, except for Andy Warhol. I wanted to meet and photograph him for my book (as a pretext), but he declined.