Between Heaven and Hell: The Films of Ulrich Seidl
In 2008 Watershed celebrated the work of Austrian director, writer, and producer Ulrich Seidl with this microsite.
This Watershed season and touring programme, which took place in 2008, celebrated the work of Austrian film director Ulrich Seidl, whose provocative oeuvre blurs the boundary between fact and fiction.
Seidl’s work has been described as a ‘cinema of disturbance', and his aesthetic is characteristically austere, filmed with a lens which lingers way past the point of comfort on his various subjects, who themselves comprise a miscellany of souls living life on the edges.
Seidl’s unflinching gaze renders his distinctive brand of cinéma vérité with a directness and immediacy that is excruciating and compelling in equal measure. His marriage of gritty realism and bleak minimalism, however ascetic, promises a truly transformative experience to those viewers bold enough (or curious enough) to keep watching. It is for this reason that Seidl is hailed as one of the most distinctive and provocative voices in European Cinema.
Ended in October 2008