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Lights, camera, …protest! Austrian film-makers and the extreme right

When the extreme right, populist Freedom Party (FPÖ) and the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) formed a coalition government in February 2000 there was widespread international outcry, with the European Union placing sanctions on its co-member country pending an investigation into the party and its practices. In Austria itself, protest manifested itself in acts of regular street demonstrations and public debates, but artists, too, expressed their resistance to the new coalition government in a variety of forms. This article discusses a dozen short films from the series, ‘Die Kunst der Stunde ist Widerstand’/‘The Art of the Day is Resistance’, premièred at the Graz Diagonale festival in 2000 and explores the range of different aesthetic responses by filmmakers in the series. The series offers far more than mere documentary images of the unrest. Instead, it provides extensive and innovative stimulus for critical engagement and is read here for the various tactics of resistance (Raunig; de Certeau) that are exploited. Some film makers deploy an ironic manipulation of political rhetoric as their key device; others represent the political situation in Austria through the lens of childhood. There are many examples of humorous intervention in the corpus and the article interrogates the materials to ask whether the comedic intent produces a conciliatory, even cathartic effect, assuaging anger and protest, or whether humour helps to invigorate cultural protest.