Notes from the Basement

Filmmaker Rainer Frimmel (Wien: Sieben Szenen, 1998, Che bella é la vita, 1997) edited many hours of home movie footage that was shot between 1993 and 1999 by the Viennese nurse Peter Haindl, who delivers a funny and frightening monologue in which he unfolds his World View Weltanschauung. While taking on various poses in his living room, Haindl addresses a future audience, giving his prejudices against women and foreigners free reign. His provocative, anger-inspired arguments are awash with contradictions. At the same time Haindl’s ruthless self-portrait also evokes contradictory feelings, such as anger side by side with hilarity. What’s more, this grumbler appears to possess considerable self-irony. His misanthropic view on humanity, politics and everything else on his horizon has previously been called a ‘psychological striptease’. The eloquent Haindl undresses the petty bourgeois mentality. This study of the rhetoric of the common man could easily have been the subject of an Ulrich Seidl film. Peter Haindl, the man in the street, died this year. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)