Schlingensiefs Container

FOREIGNERS OUT! SCHLINGENSIEF'S CONTAINER
Austria 2002, 90 min., DV, full-length documentary by Paul Poet
lim.edition including container cutout model (also available separately)

FOREIGNERS OUT! SCHLINGENSIEF’S CONTAINER (O.T.: AUSLÄNDER RAUS! SCHLINGENSIEFS CONTAINER) is a thrilling and revealing, funny yet frightening chronicle and deliberation of one of the biggest public acts of tongue-in-cheek art terrorism in the age of multimedia.

Austria 2000: At the general election, Jörg Haider’s FPÖ had met with widespread approval – and for the first time since WW2 a party of the extreme right joined the government. Never slow to react, infamous German director Christoph Schlingensief soon retaliated with an extraordinary form of protest.
As a tangible satire on xenophobia, Big Brother madness and new nationalism Schlingensief decided to stage an interactive concentration camp – right at the heart of Vienna’s picturesque tourist centre.
And Austria just freaked – soon there were thousands of screaming people on site and almost a million connected worldwide via the Internet. Knife attacks. Punch-ups. Political intrigues. An incredibly heated week that captured the European drift to the right in real time. A hardcore route to democracy.

WINNER REMI AWARD APRIL 2003 AT THE HOUSTON WORLDFEST (CATEGORY: FILM & VIDEO PRODUCTION, ECONOMIC/SOCIAL ISSUES)

WINNER IMAGES FILM FESTIVAL FOR INNOVATIVE BORDERLINE CINEMA
BEST INTERNATIONAL VIDEO 2004, TORONTO / CANADA

OFFICIAL FESTIVAL SELECTION ROTTERDAM 2003, MAR DEL PLATA 2003, BRISBANE 2003


“Truly stimulating” (Le Monde)

“Furious and drop dead funny” (Rheinische Post)

“(In his work) Schlingensief has managed to translate the intrinsic meaning of film far beyond the actual screen. Under this consideration it comes as a big, but by no means unpleasant surprise as to how much Paul Poet’s film version of this event is a real “movie”. Instead of simply relying on an “authentic” touch, it constantly froths with an artistic life of its own. (…) Poet has retranslated Schlingensief’s happening into a piece of art that imparts the “action” and itself with inherent and perennial relevance. (Leading German film critic Georg Seeßlen / EPD)