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🇦🇹 Austria /Culture & Society

Filmmaker Ruth Beckermann on Cinema and Doubting the World

From Der Standard · () German

Translated from German and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Interview Sources not specified Context piece
  • Filmmaker Ruth Beckermann discusses her approach to cinema ahead of the release of “WAX & GOLD.”
  • Beckermann rejects the distinction between documentaries and “real films,” describing her work as author-driven films shaped by an individual perspective, style and tone.

Ruth Beckermann has little patience for one question that audiences have asked her for years: “Do you only make documentaries, or do you also make real films?” She says the question still makes her blush with irritation.

For Beckermann, documentaries are journalistic works. However carefully and seriously they are made, she argues, their primary purpose is factual information. That is not how she describes her own work.

Do you only make documentaries, or do you also make real films?

· Audience members, as quoted by Ruth BeckermannBeckermann says viewers have repeatedly asked her this question about her films.

“I make FILMS!” she writes. She calls them auteur films, intended to reflect the gaze, style and tone of a particular person, as free as possible from the influence of editors and financiers.

The discussion comes as “WAX & GOLD” reaches cinemas and raises a broader question: what does it mean to look at the Global South from a European perspective?

I make FILMS!

· Ruth BeckermannShe distinguishes her auteur films from documentaries understood primarily as journalistic works.
About this summary

Originally published by Der Standard in German. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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