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.
‘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, the former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim became ensnared in a tangled web of lies during his campaign for the Presidency of Austria. The swift succession of allegations against him by the World Jewish Congress, and investigations of Austrian journalist Hugo Portisch, the denial by the Austrian political class, the outbreak of anti-Semitism and patriotism, and his election as President of Austria in 1986 are documented here in a way which reveals tactics by Waldheim which alarmingly are being imitated today by the 41st President of the USA.
While Secretary General between 1972 and 1982, Waldheim was “the man who the world trusts,” whose broad smile and expressive hands made people watching feel like he was embracing their causes. There were a few at the time quietly questioning his record during World War 2, but Waldheim stuck to the story that he was drafted into the Nazi army like tens of thousands of other Austrians, was wounded in 1941, and sat out the rest of the War focusing on his studies. Only when he declared his candidacy for president of Austria in 1985 did investigative journalist Hubertus Czernin begin digging into the records, where he discovered that Waldheim’s claims didn’t hold water.
Narrated by Ruth Beckermann, The Waldheim Waltz sets the Waldheim affair in a bigger international political context, which 30 years on, remains relevant. As Jordan Hoffman of The Times of Israel writes, “The Waldheim Waltz is eerily contemporary.”
In May 1986 during Austria’s presidential elections, in the plaza of the city’s cathedral, a protest took place. Director Ruth Beckermann was one of the activists trying to prevent the election of Kurt Waldheim. She documented some of the political events with her camera.
Watch the trailer here. “Waldheim no, Waldheim no” shouts a crowd in the center of Vienna.
More than 30 years later Beckermann returned to her own archive and additionally used international TV-material to analyze this turning point in Austrian political culture.
The film shows the lies that created the tangled web that former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim became ensnared in as he tried to conceal two years of his wartime activities.
Lie #1 took place in 1968 when the Austrian Waldheim as Secretary General of the United Nations met with Yugoslavia’s Tito the first time and said he had never before been in Yugoslavia.
Lie #2 was that he hid the fact that he had been a member of the Nazi SA since 1938 and a member of the Nazi Student League before that. It was only discovered in 1986 that he had taken part in the mass deportation of Greek Jews in Thessaloniki where 12,000 Jews, one-quarter of the population, was deported. His political party did not care if he was with the SA. In fact, they claimed that only his horse was a member of the SA, he was not…
Lie #3 he claimed he was drafted in 1940 and never signed up for the SA.
Lie #4 was the story he changed from only being a soldier for a short time to being a good and honest soldier.
Waldheim blamed the World Jewish Congress and media for smearing his good name. He denied his history which included working under a general who was executed for his Nazi war crimes.
When I looked at the material I shot 30 years ago, I was shocked. Had I really forgotten how easily emotions can be stirred up against others and used by populist politicians? In ‘The Waldheim Waltz’ I attempt to analyse what was going on back then, things which seem all too familiar in our present day of Trump, Kurz & Strache and other masters of alternative facts and populism. (Ruth Beckermann)
Sydney Levine: I have read articles about the film and interviews with you (read here) and see this as a film about individual and collective consciousness.
Ruth Beckermann: I think memories constantly become reconstructed. That applies to our individual memories, depending on the priorities we impose in the present. And collective, national stories are constantly being modified and rewritten, depending on the requirements of the present. In that sense it wasn’t just interesting for me to see my own material after a period of 30 years; it was also fascinating to re-examine my own memories and take a look at myself overall, in the international context of the material that was filmed at the time about the Waldheim affair. Individual memories can also be deceptive.
SL: I was shocked to hear those pro-Waldheim counter protestors saying Jews are swine and that they rule the world and that America needs Jews because Americans are so stupid.
Are Austrians today still so Anti-Semitic?
RB: No, they do not consider themselves to be Anti-Semitic. Austria is not as bad today. With art being returned to its Jewish owners, restitution is better than in Germany.
SL: Was this really all a World Jewish Congress ploy as Waldheim claimed in the film?
RB: No, it was much wider than WJC. It was an Austrian journalist, Hugo Portisch, who found the documents on Waldheim’s Nazi Youth membership. WJC brought it to the world’s attention.
SL: How much of the footage was yours?
RB: The black and white footage was mine. More than one-third is American news footage. I am sorry now that I did not film more, but I was so involved in the protest itself.
SL: I noticed the protestors were mostly men…There was mention of the Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder, the firebrand older woman who spoke during the protest speeches and Mrs. Waldheim herself. Can you comment on women at that period of time?
RB: Not many women were outspoken in the 80s…there are three women in total in the film: Elisabeth Waldheim, former resistance fighter Rosa Jochmann, who appears at the end when she’s giving an anti-fascist speech, and the American politician who had suggested to the US Congress to put Waldheim on the watch list.
SL: You were also among the women!
RB: It was also so obvious that Waldheim would win. Austria was isolated from the world for the next four to five years.
SL: Austria has the reputation of saying it (like Poland) was a victim of Nazism.
RB: In retrospect, the period was good for Austria because it had to inspect its conscience and an important process began. They had to rewrite the school books and be more open though the majority voted for Waldheim and was not aware of the parallels to Nazism. But they had to give up the story of their victimization.
The political landscape of Austria is still dominated by National Socialism. The Waldheim affair and the far-right Freedom party, the Hofer/Strache phenomenon are two sides of the same coin. The scandal surrounding Waldheim was an attempt to come to terms with the past at last, in some halfway honest manner, and dismantle the victim lie: the claim that Austria merely a victim during the Nazi era. …What Hofer and Strache are doing today is actually the opposite: they are employing elements from Nazi ideology in order to shape the future. And to conceal what they’re doing, they adopt an aura of innocence. That’s the worst thing about the current situation.
SL: What is the reaction to your film?
RB: Many young people come to see the film. Young people encouraged me to make it. It was released in Austria with 21 prints which are a lot for Austria. It played theatrically for two months. That was quite unexpected. There are many discussions afterward with me or the editors attending. Politicians and historians are invited to watch and be on panels.
Today Austria is mainstream with Trump, Italy, Poland, Hungary. But there are demonstrations weekly against the right-wing government. This is not new, it is just Austria and the majority who voted the government is not aware of the parallels today with Nazism. They do not consider themselves anti-Semitic.
Today the enemy is Muslims, refugees. Now they try to praise the Jews. There is even a big conference now on Anti-Semitism put on by the right-wing government.
SL: Tell me something about yourself. I assume you are Jewish. Were you born in Austria? Did you family stay in Austria throughout the war?
RB: My mother went to Palestine before the war. My father was in the Soviet army. He was from a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that became Russia. They met in Vienna after the war and I was born after the war.
Ruth Beckermann was born in Vienna where she also spent her childhood. After her studies in journalism and history of art in Vienna, Tel Aviv and New York, she took her PhD degree in 1977 at the University of Vienna. She since contributed as a journalist to several Austrian and Swiss magazines. In 1978 she co-founded the distribution company filmladen in which she was active for seven years. In this period Ruth Beckermann started to make films and to write books. Since 1985 she is working as a writer and filmmaker. Her film The Dreamed Ones was selected at many international festivals and won several awards. In 2018, Ruth Beckermann finished her latest film The Waldheim Waltz and won, among other prices, the Glashütte-Original Documentary Award of the Berlin International Film Festival.
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Title — The Waldheim Waltz
Country — Austria
Producer — Ruth Beckermann Film Produktion
International Sales — Widehouse
US Distributor — MenemshaWebsite — http://www.thewaldheimwaltz.com/en/
https://www.menemshafilms.com/waldheim-waltz
Filmography
- THE WALDHEIM WALTZ — 2018, 93 min, Color and B&W, documentary
- THE DREAMED ONES — 2016, 89 min, DCP, Color, feature film
- THE MISSING IMAGE — 2015, Multi-channel-Videoinstallation at the Albertinaplatz Vienna
- THOSE WHO GO THOSE WHO STAY — 2013, 75 min, HDV/DCP, Color
— JACKSON/MARKER 4AM — 2012, 3.35 min, HDcam, Color
— AMERICAN PASSAGES — 2011, 120 min, DV/35mm, Color
— MOZART ENIGMA — 2006, 1 min, DV/35mm, Color
— ZORRO’S BAR MITZVA — 2006, 90 min, DV/35mm, Color
— HOMEMAD(E) — 2001, 85 min, DV/35mm, Color
— A FLEETING PASSAGE TO THE ORIENT — 1999, 82 min
— EAST OF WAR — 1996, 117 min
— TOWARDS JERUSALEM — 1991, 87 min
— THE PAPER BRIDGE — 1987, 95 min, Color and B&W
— DER IGEL — 1986, 34 min, Color
— RETURN TO VIENNA — 1984, 95 min, Color and b&w
— THE STEEL HAMMER OUT THERE ON THE GRASS — 1981, 40 min, Color
— SUDDENLY, A SKTRIKE — 1978, 24 min, Color
— ARENA SQUATTED — 1977, 78 min, b&wSelected Review Excerpts:
“What does it take to make a nation reconsider its self-image? That’s the question lying at the heart of the Austrian documentarian Ruth Beckermann’s informative and unnerving “The Waldheim Waltz.” Using mostly contemporaneous material — TV reports and news conferences, as well as documentary video footage she shot herself — the filmmaker follows the controversial 1986 presidential campaign of the Austrian politician Kurt Waldheim, whose candidacy was plunged into chaos by new revelations regarding his Nazi past…
“…Beckermann wants not so much to contextualize as to invoke — with the hope, perhaps, that placing us in the middle of this debate will create its own context. Indeed, watching Waldheim’s campaign, it’s hard not to think about the present day — from the emergence of old hatreds, to the closure of elite ranks around their own, to the weaponizing of nationalism against the truth. The film may end in 1986, but the darkness it reveals still looms.”
Bilge Ebiri, The New York Times“… this is a pleasingly personal breakdown of a fascinating episode in recent European history, tightly composed and crisply edited, with an appealing undertow of dry humor and some cautionary lessons for modern voters.”
Stephen Dalton, The Hollywood Reporter“…With Austria currently the only West European nation since World War II governed by the far right, it’s time (heck, it’s long past time) that someone of Ruth Beckermann’s intelligence made a film investigating the country’s odious collective whitewashing of its Nazi-era past. In her incisive documentary “THE WALDHEIM WALTZ,” the director treats former U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim as a poster boy of the phenomenon. Using only footage from the 1970s and ’80s, some of which she shot herself while protesting Waldheim’s successful bid for the Austrian presidency, Beckermann methodically reveals the timeline of revelations detailing her subject’s Nazi affiliations, and how notwithstanding the evidence, a majority of the electorate in 1986 still voted him into office.
If it sounds like a dry history lesson, think again. Thanks to her smart narration — clear, impassioned but never polemical — and the astute way she allows exceptional footage to play out to its full extent, “THE WALDHEIM WALTZ” has a sense of urgency made more pressing given political developments not just in Austria but Poland and Hungary as well.
…Beckermann (“The Dreamed Ones”) counts down the days leading to the election, ticking off each one as new revelations come to light. Most devastating is footage from a highly unusual U.S. Congressional hearing looking into the allegations, during which Rep. Tom Lantos questions Waldheim’s New York-based son Gerhard, refusing to tolerate any obfuscation or unsupportable denials. Less skilled directors would have edited the sequence down, but in the style of the best legal dramas, Beckermann lets it all play out to devastating effectiveness. Earlier in her narration, she addresses the dilemma of all activist filmmakers who wonder when to pick up the protest banner instead of the movie camera; with great satisfaction to all, she manages both.”
Jay Weissberg, Variety“There’s little waltzing in THE WALDHEIM WALTZ, although we do see its subject beaming as he conducts a brass band, but Ruth Beckermann’s documentary is a reminder that politicians’ maintenance of their image is an intricate and slippery dance, with the public not always allowed to know all the steps.
“…while the film recounts events three decades ago, it couldn’t be more relevant today. Premiered in Berlin’s Forum section, where it won the Glashütte Original Documentary Award, this fascinating, provocative work should attract fascination and controversy when it opens in Austria in autumn, and will be a hot ticket on the festival circuit and documentary distribution network.
“…One of the themes that emerges most vividly from the film is the idea that while Germany as a nation faced up to its wartime iniquities, Austria went into a state of denial, for which Waldheim is the absolute poster boy, continuing to present itself as Germany’s victim and denying its active involvement in the crimes of World War Two. The film is very much about confronting this state of blockage in the national consciousness, in which the post-war problem is, as a TV journalist puts it, “what are you supposed to do with 550,000 registered Nazis?””
Jonathan Romney, Screen InternationalFilm Festivals/Awards Include
Berlin International Film Festival — Winner of the Glashutte Prize for best documentary
International Women’s Film Festival
Diagonale Graz
Cinema du Reel
Forum des images
Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
DMZ International Documentary Film Festival
New York Film FestivalOfficial US Trailer:
