Bernhard Hetzenauer

Der Mexikaner Germán López Rosales schildert seine Erfahrungen eines Schleppertransports von der mexikanischen Grenzstadt Laredo nach San Antonio, Texas. Neben Germán, in den stockdunklen Laderaum eines LKW eingeschlossen, starben auf Grund der starken Hitzeentwicklung am Tag der Überfahrt zehn der 39 mit ihm reisenden Migranten. Der dokumentarische Essay zeichnet Germans Weg von seinem mexikanischen Heimatdorf bis Texas nach. Seine Stimme aus dem Off schildert dabei eindringlich den Hergang der Ereignisse. Die Weite und scheinbare Idylle der südtexanischen Landschaften bilden einen kaum überbrückbaren Kontrast zu Germáns intimen Schilderungen und verweisen auf die Absurdität des sich immer mehr verschärfenden Grenzkonflikts.

Consuelo’s daughter Victoria was brutally murdered in Mexico City. The Birthmark visualizes the mother’s inexpressible pain in blurry, abstract images, which become concrete only selectively: in macro-recordings of fleshy scar tissue and threatening pointy spikes that emphatically drill into not only the viewers’ eyes, but also their bosom.

(Michelle Koch, catalogue Diagonale 2020)

“Faces of Athens” highlights the consequences of the collapse of the Greek social and health systems after the implementation of budget cuts demanded by the EU’s finance ministers.

When the situation in public hospitals became increasingly hopeless, the Athenian cardiologist Dr. Giorgos Vichas decided to set up a health center together with volunteers in 2011. This clinic in the south of Athens was to be completely free of charge for those without insurance. The Metropolitan Community Clinic at Elliniko was one of many such initiatives that were founded all over Greece thanks to civic commitment.

Despite various economic obstacles, these social clinics sought to help society’s weakest, the true victims of the financial crisis, by offering medical aid, surgery, and providing medicine. Many of those affected could not afford costly visits to the doctor or prescription fees even when they were seriously ill.

In 23 personal testimonies, volunteers and patients recount their lives during the financial crisis. These texts are based on conversations that Bernhard Hetzenauer conducted in April and May 2016 in several places across Athens, which can be seen as exemplary of Greek solidarity. These include the Social Clinic of Elliniko, the KIFA (Athens Community Polyclinic and Pharmacy) near Omonia Square and a similar KIFA in Piraeus.

Together with video portraits of the interviewees, these testimonies were shown in the eponymous ​“Faces of Athens” exhibition in Vienna’s Künstlerhaus 1050 and the gallery KC Grad in Belgrade in the summer of 2017.

(Excerpt from catalogue ​“Faces of Athens”, Berlin: Revolver Publishing, 2019)

Chon, a member of the Native Mexican Wirrárika community, tells the story of his cousin Faustino, son of the shaman of an indigenous settlement called La Mora. In the 1980’s Faustino had proclaimed himself to be God. Together with an armed group he menaced and terrorized other neighboring villages. When Chon witnessed his cousin killing members of their own community, he escaped.

(catalogue, Viennale 2017)

Born in 1912 in Prague, Vera Kohn escaped Czechoslovakia a few months after Nazi Germany had invaded her country. In 1939 she made her way with her family to Ecuador where many Jews found refuge. Here she began a new life. After a career as a leading actress in Quito, she traveled to Europe because of a severe mental crisis to undergo psychotherapy with German Gestalt psychotherapist Karlfried Dürckheim. After three years of studying Dürckheim’s ​“Initiative Therapy,” Vera returned to Ecuador, where for many years she was a practicing psychologist and teacher of Zen Buddhism. This film tells Vera’s story, which the film’s director contrasts and merges with his personal questions of collective guilt and individual responsibility as he attempts to come to terms with his family’s legacy.

In this film the director accompanies 25-year-old Mexican actress Ana Serrano through a process of finding herself. In a poetic way the film shows the painful process of losing a beloved person and the search for a way to deal with the loss.

(catalogue, Crossing Europe 2010)

Ambato, a small city in the Ecuadorian sierra. 17-year-old former street kid Vicente tries to change his poor life. He is helped by Catholic nun Madre Narciza who is the head of a social project there. 19-year-old Miguel and his friends, a group of shoeshiners, try to escape their economic problems by playing folcloristic music. Narciza dedicates her life to offer these young people a – maybe – better future. The film comes close to these young people without looking at them from a first-world-point-of-view but showing them as human beings struggling for their dreams.

In a slide show in black and white, the spectator watches the director’s memories of his grandmother. Accompanied by an intimate voice-over spoken by the director himself, images from a time long ago come back to life.

(Culture Unplugged)